I hope everyone was able to find the supplies that I suggested in the last part. If anyone had any trouble, please let me know, either through a personal message or on the comment section here and between myself and the others here, we should be able to help you.
We are now ready to apply our patterns to the wood in preparation for cutting. But first of all you need a pattern. I have made up a sheet of some simple shapes that you can use as a practice scroll saw pattern. Just click on the link here and it should bring you to the pattern:
It is located in my shared Google Documents folder.
Once you are on that page, you can download the page to your own computer as a PDF file and print as many copies as you need to use for practice.
For those of you who are not familiar with how to do that, please follow these steps:
-On the upper left corner of the page, right under the ‘Google docs’ logo, you will see the word ‘file.’ Click on it.
-The menu will drop down and you will see the choice ‘Download Original’. 
-Click on it. You will then see a dialog box that comes up to ask you if you want to open or save the file. Choose to open the file with whatever PDF reader program you have on your computer. (Mine is Adobe Acrobat 8.1, as shown here)
When you click on ‘OK’, it should open in your PDF reader program. Then you can save it where you want on your computer and print it out as many times as needed. I would suggest that you make a new folder for all the class materials I will be providing throughout the lessons. That way they are all in one place if you need them.
Now we are ready to apply the pattern.
Cut the pieces apart and loosely place them on your wood.
For practice purposes, I am using a piece of pine that is about 5/8” thick and the piece on the right is some brown maple that is a bit shy of 1/2” thick. As I said in the previous lesson, in many patterns (except the ones that are assembled pieces, such as boxes and slotted ornaments) it really doesn’t matter if your wood is exactly the size suggested. That is the nice thing with scroll sawing – it allows you to use lots of smaller odd pieces you may have around your shop.
I like to use blue painter’s tape on my wood prior to applying the pattern with spray adhesive. The purpose of doing this is so that the pattern comes off easily and also the adhesive in the tape helps keep the blade cool and prevents burning of many hard woods. It also helps prolong the life of your scroll saw blade.
I just tried this method recently when I was in New York for the woodworking show I attended there. Prior to that, I applied the pattern right to the wood, and then applied a layer of clear packaging tape over it to prevent burning. This also worked fine, but sometimes it was difficult to remove the paper pattern, as different types of spray adhesives react differently with different temperatures, wood types and several other factors. When not using the blue tape, you had to be far more careful about allowing the adhesive to ‘rest’ or tack up a bit before applying the pattern to the wood. Otherwise it would be difficult to remove when you were finished scroll sawing. On the other end of the scale, if you waited too long to apply it, it would not stick enough and the pattern would be falling off during scrolling, which was both aggravating and increased your chances of ruining your project. Using the blue tape underneath eliminates the guesswork and makes the process much easier.
Simply cover the piece of wood you are going to cut with an even layer of blue tape:
Use an empty box lid or other large, flat surface (I use a large pizza box) and spray the back of the pattern pieces with an even misting of spray adhesive.
Wait a few minutes until they begin to feel tacky and similar to the feel of masking tape before applying them to your wood. If you don’t wait and they feel slippery, they may not stick well. If you wait too long and they don’t adhere correctly, you can just wait a minute or so and then spray another coat and try again.
You can see what I did here on this piece was to line up the square with the square edge of the wood. Sometimes it is difficult to scroll a straight line and if you have a perfectly straight edge, it is kind of nice to get a head start and have one of them done for you already.
If you want to see a short video that I made last year of me spraying on the adhesive and gluing the pattern directly to the wood, you can watch the video below:
It is the same procedure as with using the blue tape, and it may give you a little better idea of how much spray you need to use.
That is all that I am going to cover in this segment. The next segment we will actually be cutting and we will learn good ways to cast on and cast off of our piece.
I will be using the #5 reverse tooth blades in cutting these pieces, but with these simple designs and depending on which wood you have, you may use something similar. Remember I said that there are a lot of ‘right’ ways to accomplish things in scroll sawing and we don’t all have to use the exact same things. It is what is most comfortable to us.
I hope to post the next segment very shortly, but I want to be sure that everyone understands things up to this point. Please feel free to comment and ask questions if you have any and I will be happy to help you.
Thank you for reading!
As an extra note – please let me know if you have any trouble with downloading the pattern or any of the links. I am new to using Google Docs and I hope this method is going to be the easiest way to get you patterns. The size of the larger circle should be 3”. Hopefully, after downloading it, the size will not be affected. Let me know if it is different please. :)