My name is Michael Moore. I am a woodworker.
I live in Nacogdoches. I’ve been doing woodworking
for about the last 20 years, serious woodworking
for the last 12, 13, 14 years, something like
that. My main tool of choice is the scroll
saw. We’re going to be cutting a piece – a
couple of pieces of scroll art this morning.
For those of you who don’t know what a scroll
saw is, a scroll saw is a machine that has
a tiny blade, stays stationary, stays in one
place and you move the piece of wood around
it to… The way that you use the scroll saw
is you start with a design that you’ve created,
which is basically a stencil, so that when
you get done cutting, nothing falls off. Falling
off is a bad thing. You use a spray adhesive
to hook it on to a piece of wood. My style
of cutting is I use four pieces of 1/8th inch
Baltic birch. I put the design in based on
how it’s going to be framed, use tape, tape
it together, use a drill press to drill the
holes where the blades are going to be cutting,
and then you take it to the scroll saw and
you cut the pieces out, one piece at a time.
So the piece we’re going to be using today,
you have 12 to 15 cuts a piece. So when you
look at a piece of scroll art, every black
space is a space that was cut out one at a
time. So that means that you thread the blade
through, connect the blade, tension the saw,
turn the saw on, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut,
stop, turn the blade off, un-tension the blade,
take it out, reposition, do it over and over
and over again. So I find it relaxing and
fun to do. The type of – this type of cutting
is called fretwork. There’s two types of
cutting in scrollsaw – positive, where if
you cut a hand you see a hand. Reverse negative
is you have a piece of wood and everything,
including bits and pieces of the hand, are
cut out, so that when you look at it you see
the shadows where the hand is at so that you
can actually see it. So when I’m done, we
add a piece of black felt to the back, and
put a matting on it, and it’s a piece of
finished art. A lot of people like to use
thick wood – 1/2-inch to 3/4 of an inch
– and they cut one piece at a time. I like
to use much, much thinner wood, much thinner
blades, because I can get a whole lot more
detail into the piece of wood than if you
use a thick piece of wood, you use larger
blades.
[“Flight of the Bumblebee” plays]
In real life, I am a technical recruiter,
and 18 years ago, I was the lead technical
recruiter for Ernst & Young technical consulting.
And my schedule was I spent a week in Houston,
a week in Chicago, a week in Houston, a week
in New York, week in Houston, week in Atlanta,
week in Houston, week in Chicago, New York,
Atlanta – that was my schedule. My birthday
is at the beginning of July, and on my birthday
my mother-in-law gave me this big box that
had a scroll saw and a pattern book. She says,
you travel too much, you probably don’t
have any hobbies, you’re going to die of
a heart attack from working too much. Here’s
a scroll saw, here’s a pattern book, I want
25 presents to give to relatives by Christmas.
And I started cutting, and I got the bug.
And I just kept on cutting and kept on cutting,
and my wife said, this stuff is piling up,
either start selling it or I’m going to
start throwing it away. And so I went to church
bazaars, little local craft fairs, flea markets
around the west side of Houston where we lived,
and it sold rather well, and my wife just
thought I would take the money and say, this
is fun. Nah. I bought more wood, bigger saws,
better saws, and 11 years ago we got accepted
into the Texas Renaissance Festival, and we’ve
been doing renaissance festivals ever since.
And we do renaissance festivals, comic cons,
street festivals, and juried art fairs.
