Australian Scrollsaw
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I'm Tom Manley, and like many of our Australian Scrollsawers in the 1980's was convinced that my fretwork hobby was a lonely pursuit that had died out 40 years before I started doing it. My early efforts were cut with a hand frame from patterns enlarged from old woodwork magazines and traced onto the wood with carbon paper.
The handframe was eventually replaced with a machine I built from pipe fittings and a fridge compressor, but the big breakthrough came in the mid 80's when I purchased some Spielman books, which led to sending to America for a Reidle pattern catalog.
By 1991 we were aware of only 3 scrollsawers in Australia but thousands in America. Disappointed by this, I decided to assist and promote scrolling here by demonstrating at festivals and fairs at every oppurtunity, along with starting a mail order supply service in 1996 for our scrollers to obtain blades and supplies from the USA. There are now several hundred scrollers here and we have had 2 annual scrollsaw festivals with a third planned for May 2002. My work with the festival commitee in 99 led to my using a computer for the first time, and now after a lot of practice (and swearing) I have started designing patterns plus re drawing a lot of 70 to 100 year old patterns by computer. My real interest in this field is these old style patterns which I hope to start releasing in America and Australia shortly, but I enjoy drawing the odd small novelty design such as miniclocks etc, and would like to share them with you regularly every month over the internet. I belong to six scrollsaw clubs on Yahoo! through which I have made many new friends and will post a message to the boards each time a new design is ready to download. Just click the FREE ! MONTHLY PATTERNS link in the left margin for the patterns and printing instructions.
Remember :-
This is your hobby, be proud of your handiwork and don't be too shy to send us an email or a photo.
Be good, stay happy and keep scrolling, Tom Manley.
FOR OUR
FREE!
MONTHLY DOWNLOAD
PATTERNS
CLICK HERE
FOR PICTURES
INFORMATION
AND ORDERING
DETAILS FOR MY
LATEST
NEW SCROLLSAW PATTERN DESIGNS
Now available in USA
and Australia by
Mail Order
For photo Galleries of
Australian Scrollsaw
Projects and Festivals
256 Photos
at the second National
Scrollsaw Festival Feb 2000.
