The day after I purchased my scroll saw, I set it up and was playing with it learning how to make different types of cuts. After an hour or so of drawing squiggly lines on scrap and then cuttting them out, I decided I wanted to practice on something a little more interesting.
My original plan was to find a fairly simple pattern to cut out just to hone my scrolling skills, and then toss it as scrap. I wasn't intending on creating a project that I would actually finish. After a short search on the internet, I came across this picture of a teddy bear (that I think was intended to be printed out for children to color.) I printed it out and glued it to a piece of pine, and cut out all of the pieces.
When I was finished, it was't perfect but it looked a lot better than I had predicted. I gave it a good sanding, rounding off all of the edges, then dipped the different pieces in different colors of stain. When the stain dried, I glued the pieces back together and sprayed it with gloss poly.
It is now hanging in my son's room as a decoration.
This isn't true intarsia, as I used stain and cut the pieces from a single board rather than using different woods and orienting the grain in directions that complement the final picture. I believe what I've actually done here is considered "segmentation." Nevertheless, this method gives you 90% of the look with about 10% of the work. The project was easy and came together very quickly (less than 4 hours start to finish.)
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This page last updated on 06/28/2018