Once I have the stack prepped, I turn to the drill press, and make pilot holes for all of the interior cuts, and usually one near the exterior, which makes the final exterior cut easier.
here it is, ready to cut,
Some basic scroll saw how to: generally you should cut from the center outward, as the piece gets weaker structurally the more material you remove. This piece was only 2x3" so I wasn't too worried about that.
Here's the first two sections cut out: note that on skinny cuts which end in a point, I usually cut toward the point.
rear of the same section:
Again, I cut toward the point wherever possible, and I try to start at an 'outside' corner:
Sometimes you don't have a 'good' start point, such as the eyes of the pumpkin in this piece. At that point, I start the pilot in the center, cut to the line, make a 90 degree turn and cut counter clockwise. (Most blades are stamped, and their teeth are set so that a counter clockwise cut is smoother than clockwise).
look closely at the 'right' eye, I drew some arrows showing how I cut out the left eye.
Experienced scroll sawyers can make very sharp turns, so from the entry point, I cut to the line, and all the way around to the right corner of the eye. At that point, I stop the saw, and re thread from the pilot hole. Cutting clockwise into the corner, this can give a crisper corner than the reversal technique. In this cut I think the results were about even.
When it came to the mouth, I did things a little different. I wanted crisp teeth and corners, so I cut towards the corners of the mouth:
here's how that looked on the back:
there is only one pilot, the other 'hole' is where I looped the workpiece to make the tooth crisp and clean. That works, but only where you have lots of scrap 'room' to maneuver.
I tried a different technique on the other corner. After I made the cut on the top section, I widened the cut a bit at the corner:
This allowed me to reverse the blade into the corner, and then make one long smooth cut all along the bottom curve of the mouth:
This shot also shows how I hold a piece, keeping my fingers out of the path of the blade in case the piece jumps.
continued...