I've found that
www.thewoodenteddybear.com is the best source for scroll saw blades both pinned end and un-pinned. I have been buying only from them for about 8 years now. Their prices are good and they ship quickly. I prefer the Flying Dutchman brand blades since their quality seems to be better than other brands. I was having a lot of trouble with Olson blades because the blade teeth were not evenly offset, so the blades wanted to cut with an offset. I switched to Flying Dutchman blades (manufactured by Nigua) and no longer have this problem. I believe that they are made in Switzerland. Olson blades are made in Bethel, CT. Olson PGT (precision ground teeth) blades are quite good, but I had a lot of problems with their regular blades.
You will also find that most people learning and using scroll saws can be found on the
www.scrollsawvillage.com forum. Many people who scroll saw are not full woodworkers with woodworking shops like us, but some are incredibly talented in scroll sawing, probably because that is the only woodworking that they do.
I have been scrolling for about 50 years now, beginning with a pin end type saw, but now I'm on my 3rd pin less blade saw, a DeWalt 788 type 1 and I may be upgrading again soon. Scroll sawing technology took a giant step forward about 25 years ago when the saw designs changed from pulling the blade up via a spring to the design that now mechanically pulls the blade up as well as down. Changing the design to use blade grips that can hold pin less blades was another significant design change that occurred at about the same time. We can now use much smaller blade sizes and drill much smaller blade feed through holes for making inside cuts. With this new generation of saw, the blade can be tensioned much higher, resulting in much straighter and cleaner cuts, and the blades, even the 1/0-2/0 sizes, usually wear out long before they break. The old spring return saws frequently broke even the larger blades when the user caused the blade to bind in the work. The spring couldn't pull the blade up because of the binding, but the machinery below pushed it up anyway, buckling and then breaking, the blade.
It's fun to restore old woodworking tools, but sometimes the technology that created them is now quite obsolete. Go ahead and finish your restoration of that saw and get some blades that fit it, but don't give up on scroll sawing after using it for a while, at least not until you try out one of the newer technology scroll saws. They aren't the same at all. There is almost no comparison between what you have and one of this new generation of scroll saw.
I've been making reindeer using my scroll saw every year for the past 16 years. My smallest is shown in the attached photos. I make 4 sizes and this one is the smallest. I've now made well over 5,000 reindeer in the past 16 years and give them away as Christmas gifts, but I make many other things as well. The cross is another. I cut it out using my scroll saw, but then used an air powered dentist drill with 1/16" shank bits to carve the leaves and vines.
Charley
