Marilyn,

I have made miles of cuts in metal using a scroll saw, mostly when I had my sign company and was making metal letters. The bigger ones I cut with the band saw, but much of my work was small stuff that required the scroll saw. I tried a couple different ones, and ended up with a Rockwell Delta with a 20" throat. It's a model that is no longer made, unfortunately, and it is the nicest one I've ever used. It is all cast iron, very rigid, and uses a "C" frame saw arm driven by a variable speed 1hp DC motor. The DC motor is constant torque, using a feedback circuit, so you just set the number of strokes per minute that you want and it naintains that, regardless of load. Using the right blades, it will cut metal from 32 gauge up to 1" very nicely.

I use mostly Herkules jeweler's saw blades in my scroll saw when cutting metal. The so-called metal cutting blades sold for scroll saws simply don't work that well. My Rockwell saw takes plain-end blades, so jeweler's blades work very nicely in it.

I haven't checked out any of the currently available scroll saws to see what looks good, so I can't recommend anything. Just look for one that is heavily made, very rigid, with variable speed and constant torque. The constant torque is important or the saw will bog down at low speeds and break blades.

I have one too. Sweet machine.
Something died on it and I got a Rigid on sale to replace it.
after a week I draqged the delta out of the recycle pile, tore it apart and fixed it. Runs great again.
Gettin old, can't remember what was wrong.

Gene Olson
Sculptor
Elk River, MN

Gene,

I can sure understand you hauling it back out and fixing it. At the time I bought mine, I had already tried two or three others that just didn't cut it, and I was pretty nervous about dropping the six or seven hundred bucks (don't remember exactly what it was now) for the Delta. I've never been sorry though. I've had the thing for well over twenty years now and it still works fine. If it ever gives up on me, I don't know how I would replace it; I haven't seen anything else to equal it. I don't use it much these days, but when I do, nothing else will do the job as well.

It's really a shame that so many of the really good tools are no longer being made, and only mediocre stuff is available at any price. I understand that the manufacturers are just responding to the market, which says to me that people seem to have lost the eye for quality, or the willingness to pay what quality costs.