Best Wood for Scroll Saw Projects

Wood for Scroll Saw Toddler Projects

If you’re making projects for babies/toddlers, keep in mind that those little hands like to explore, that can often mean putting items in their mouths. There are certain products and wood species that shouldn’t end up in a tiny mouth, or any mouth for that matter. MDF and plywood materials have resins/glue that shouldn’t be ingested, so it’s best to stick to hardwoods that are dense, and won’t break easily if they are dropped and create sharp edges or tiny pieces. In this application, we recommend sticking with maple, birch, oaks or ash.

Wood for Scroll Saw Mosaics

If you’re adventurous enough to try out some mosaic designs, our ¼” thins are an excellent option to be able to play around with grain patterns and alternating colours. ¼” is a breeze to cut through, even with more dense woods, and this also provides an opportunity to play around with different species without committing to larger pieces of wood.

In our personal experience as scroll saw enthusiasts, a couple of layers of baltic birch paired with some ½” thick hardwood is a great way to pair a darker or “fun” coloured wood with a simple background for name puzzles. For beginners, it’s a great way to practice your scroll skills on some bubbly and chunky lettering, while also tackling a few different materials to get a feel for how the saw works and what your ideal tension is for different materials.

Best Wood for Scroll Saw Signs

The sign making world seems to have exploded in the past few years, and thanks to some of our favourite makers (we’re looking at you Lizzy from @thehouseoftimber and Marissa from @pearlandpine) and MDF has become a hugely popular material. It cuts like butter, and when you nail your finishing techniques with paint, you would have no idea that it’s a man-made and cost effective material being placed on your finished project.

For those who like to have the look of wood grain for their project, but can get away with an alternative material, our veneered craft ply has been a game changer for our scroll saw community. It’s got an MDF core with veneer faces, so you get the benefits of MDF with the appearance of solid wood. For this product, it’s best to try some samples for how to finish your pieces, because you don’t want to have a finish being applied to the MDF that will cause the core to swell. A light coat of finish that you can wipe on and buff out quickly is an excellent Option.

Blades for Scroll Saw Projects

Once you’ve got your materials sorted out, you don’t want to end up trying to cut it with the wrong blades. We’ve been working with Pegas blades and we can’t say enough good things about them. They’ve got a variety of options that will help you cut through thin material and create fine details, or be able to chew through thick hardwoods with ease. They’ve got a really handy spreadsheet to detail which blades will work best for your project, and we’ll link it here. Our favourite blades are the Modified Geometry in size 5 - they’ll cut through MDF like butter with super smooth edges that don’t need any sanding before they’re primed & painted. The MFG #7 will make easy work of hardwoods, especially cutting through some ¾” walnuts for these cute name puzzles.

Share Your Scroll Saw Projects

We can’t wait to see what everyone is up to on their scroll saws now that the weather is nice enough to open up garage doors and let the dust fly freely!