About 9 months ago while trolling the local Craigslist tool section, I came across an ad for a 1940s Craftsman scroll saw for $25. Since I was completely fed up with my Harbor Freight scroll saw that was unsurprisingly falling apart, I contacted the guy and set up a time to meet him. It was in kind of rough shape with rust on the table, grease and filth covering the whole thing and the scroll saw and motor were haphazardly mounted to a beaten up old board that looked like it had been pulled off the side of a barn, but it worked.
I happily paid the man and brought my new acquisition to my shop to tear it down, clean it up and refinish it. In fact, I was so excited about fixing up another old power tool that I completely forgot to take any before photos or even any in progress shots.
Within a few hours of getting it, I already had it torn down, most of the metal and chrome had been wire wheeled and polished and the body and pulley cover were cleaned up and prepped for paint. Since I wasn't able to get the metal parts and chrome cap completely new looking (nor did I really want to), I only cleaned up the work table to the point of being relatively rust free and usable with a fair amount of steel wool and elbow grease. There was still a little bit of rust staining to the table, but nothing that would cause issues with using the scroll saw as it was.
The whole unit was shot with a fresh coat of black primer before I finally got around to doing some research to find out more about what model of scroll saw it was and when it was built so that I could paint it the right color and reproduce the appropriate decals. The previous owner to the guy I got the scroll saw from had obviously given it a new coat of paint at some point and failed to preserve any of the manufacturer's plates or nomenclature to identify the model number. This meant checking out the Old Woodworking Machines photo index and looking through more images of old scroll saws than even I wanted to see in my life.
I started by checking out the Craftsman section, since the guy told me that was who made it. It didn't take long to realize that whoever made it, it wasn't Craftsman... or any of their subsidiaries like Dunlop, Companion, Atlas or King Seeley. So I looked at some of the other makers... and came up with nothing. It seemed like no one made a scroll saw where the body was all one casting that had an art deco inspired pulley cover. I was at a dead end. So I put the scroll saw back together, built a tripod stand with a new toggle switch for power, and coated the work table with some Johnson's Paste Wax. After adding a length of link belt from the motor to drive pulley and adding a length of clear tubing for the air assist, I was ready to start using it as is. Needless to say it was miles ahead of the Harbor Freight scroll saw.
More than a few months passed before I tried searching on Old Woodworking Machines again to find the maker. It had been bothering me for awhile not knowing for sure who made it. While looking through lesser known makers, I found a single listing for a Power King scroll saw that still had the original decals labeled as being made in the 1930s. I was pretty sure I had finally found it. All the castings looked the same except his was missing the pulley cover. Fortunately, there were a few scans of some old Power King tool catalogs on the site. Smack dab on page 3 of the 1941 Power King Catalog was my little 15" scroll saw.
I checked Google and the decal archive on OWWM to see if I could find any better images of the decals than the ones on the other guy's scroll saw, but couldn't find any. So I had to spend some time with Adobe Illustrator and recreate them. Fortunately, his were in good shape and he had both the round decal on the front of the scroll saw and the long decal on the arm. You can see the resulting images of both the decals on the right and above.
I didn't have any accurate colors to go off of, so I stripped the scroll saw down again, cleaned off the saw dust, and sprayed it with a few coats of Rustoleum Hammered Bronze spray paint. Once that was dry and buffed with a finishing pad to get rid of the dust whiskers, I put the machine back together for the final time and started to work printing out the decals using Clear Testors Inkjet Decal Paper (check the post on the Companion Lathe restoration for my thoughts on Testor's software). The reference scroll saw didn't have a pulley cover, so I checked the 1941 catalog again and sure enough, it looked like the round decal was sitting in the middle of the art deco "wings" on the side of the cover. So I printed out the decals and added them to the scroll saw and it was finally done.
I still might do a few more modifications to it in the future like add some sort of speed controller or build a new stand that looks a little better than the tripod one I put together, but all in all I'm happy with the way this one turned out.
I happily paid the man and brought my new acquisition to my shop to tear it down, clean it up and refinish it. In fact, I was so excited about fixing up another old power tool that I completely forgot to take any before photos or even any in progress shots.Within a few hours of getting it, I already had it torn down, most of the metal and chrome had been wire wheeled and polished and the body and pulley cover were cleaned up and prepped for paint. Since I wasn't able to get the metal parts and chrome cap completely new looking (nor did I really want to), I only cleaned up the work table to the point of being relatively rust free and usable with a fair amount of steel wool and elbow grease. There was still a little bit of rust staining to the table, but nothing that would cause issues with using the scroll saw as it was.
I started by checking out the Craftsman section, since the guy told me that was who made it. It didn't take long to realize that whoever made it, it wasn't Craftsman... or any of their subsidiaries like Dunlop, Companion, Atlas or King Seeley. So I looked at some of the other makers... and came up with nothing. It seemed like no one made a scroll saw where the body was all one casting that had an art deco inspired pulley cover. I was at a dead end. So I put the scroll saw back together, built a tripod stand with a new toggle switch for power, and coated the work table with some Johnson's Paste Wax. After adding a length of link belt from the motor to drive pulley and adding a length of clear tubing for the air assist, I was ready to start using it as is. Needless to say it was miles ahead of the Harbor Freight scroll saw.
I checked Google and the decal archive on OWWM to see if I could find any better images of the decals than the ones on the other guy's scroll saw, but couldn't find any. So I had to spend some time with Adobe Illustrator and recreate them. Fortunately, his were in good shape and he had both the round decal on the front of the scroll saw and the long decal on the arm. You can see the resulting images of both the decals on the right and above.
I didn't have any accurate colors to go off of, so I stripped the scroll saw down again, cleaned off the saw dust, and sprayed it with a few coats of Rustoleum Hammered Bronze spray paint. Once that was dry and buffed with a finishing pad to get rid of the dust whiskers, I put the machine back together for the final time and started to work printing out the decals using Clear Testors Inkjet Decal Paper (check the post on the Companion Lathe restoration for my thoughts on Testor's software). The reference scroll saw didn't have a pulley cover, so I checked the 1941 catalog again and sure enough, it looked like the round decal was sitting in the middle of the art deco "wings" on the side of the cover. So I printed out the decals and added them to the scroll saw and it was finally done.I still might do a few more modifications to it in the future like add some sort of speed controller or build a new stand that looks a little better than the tripod one I put together, but all in all I'm happy with the way this one turned out.
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