Instead of glue, tape, or metal brads, I use wooden toothpicks to hold a stack of blanks together. Wooden toothpicks will not scratch your saw table and if you accidentally cut through one, it won’t break the saw blade.
Most round wooden toothpicks are approximately 5/64″ (2.4mm) in diameter. I drill 3/32″ (2.5mm)-diameter holes where I want to place the toothpicks. Apply a little glue to the toothpicks and slide them into the holes. After the glue dries, trim the toothpicks flush with the top and bottom of the blank.
After you are done cutting the fretwork, use a small diamond bit in a Dremel locked into a Dremel router table to clean up the frets. The router table provides a flat surface to rest the blank on and the diamond bit cuts slowly enough that I can remove errors and fuzzies with great precision.
Alfred Peirolo
North Fort Myers, Fla.
Painting Small Parts
When I made the horse and wagon from Scroll Saw Woodworking & Crafts Holiday 2009 (Issue 37), I had to paint twenty round top plugs, four holly leaves, and four wheel covers. It can be difficult to keep these small parts in place without getting paint on everything.
To make the task of painting small pieces easier, place the small pieces on the sticky side of a piece of masking tape. Then, tape the strips of masking tape to a piece of cardboard and paint the pieces. Flip the pieces over after the paint dries and reattach them to the tape to paint the other side. You can move the cardboard around to work on another project while the paint dries. When the paint is dry, pull the pieces off of the tape and throw the cardboard away.
Michael A. Esposito
New Haven, Conn.
