Hello Friends! So this is going to be a first look at this Dremel Motosaw, which was a prize
from Instructables. So there's the instructions.
That looks like the cutting base. Must be an insert going in there...
Extraction... Wooofffff - It stinks! We've got a good amount
of plastic off-gassing going on. That's a little Instructables note pad that came with
this, which is VERY cute. God bless Instructables. So we've got a selection of blades there.
Mostly seem the same. Clamps...hmmm, just some bent steel, very
crude looking C clamps. And the saw itself...
Of course that's a... oh, that's going to be awkward. [on off switching noise]
Smells like actual burning plastic. Will have to throw this box outside!
Well the clamping is not exactly clear to me. Lets have a look at the instructions.
"Mounting the base station to an unstable surface can invite an accident." [laughs]
Oh please do come and stay, accident... "position the saw station in front of the edge of a
flat work surface... Fast forward... Well, what do we think of that?
The bits in question don't seem particularly strong to me. I believe that some people might
describe them as "chincey". Well we'll see what happens.
There's the site transformer, we are going to need to use. That's doing to go in the
wall. But unfortunately, this piddley little thing is not going to fit in there, so we
are going to need something to convert... Did that work??
[turns on - vibration noise of motosaw] Smell that grease.
Well it's not a very pleasant noise, you'd definitely want some ear defenders after a
while... So, that's all we've got here. Very awfully
drawn. So I'll need to draw, one, two, three, four, five holes that are doing to fit through
that. [Drill sounds]
Now than, if I was doing this properly I would have printed out some kind of nice template
or something. But this will do for now. Lets just cut that first.
We've got the classic annoyance, of neither of these dam fittings fitting the hover.
So we will start of with this nice small piece. Towards the end of the video we will put it
through it's paces with something much thicker. One of the first things I noticed here was
how much the table vibrated - you can really see that wood jiggling around. And I guess
that's kind of inevitable without a big heavy cast iron table, which most scroll saws do
have. Cast iron being very good at absorbing vibrations.
Anyway, lets plough on and cut some wood. I don't think's an insurmountable problem.
The work piece and my hands are kind of damping the vibrations and holding things in place
anyway. It seems to be making it through this cut
without too much trouble, which I suppose is what you'd expect for that thickness of
material, with a brand new blade. So now I'm just getting the presser foot out of the way,
taking the blade off and trying to tread it through one of those holes so we can cut the
internal edges of some of these shapes. So the presser foot is quite funny and I'm
fairly sure you should have it down, all the way onto the work-piece. But just so you can
see what's going on, I've got it up here, and also so I can see what’s going on when
you cut it - visibility is not great when the presser foot is right onto the work piece.
Try this a bit more seamlessly this time.. So, boosh. bosch, ahhhh - yep it's come out!
My previous self is getting a little bit frustrated there, because it's not that easy to attach
the blade to the bottom mounting - you sort of have to hook it over this invisible thing
and sort of fiddle it around. Seems to be it.
This is one of the things that you can't really do with a bandsaw. This removing of material
from the inside of a pattern, which is especially useful if you are cutting out words.
haha, So there goes that blade! I guess that was inevitable, it's a very small blade and
I was kind of... Well ironically when I was doing that, I wasn't really pushing it much
at all. umm... Until then It is not so awful. It's like, cutting out...
I need a lot more practice with it I think, is the main thing. I don't think I want to
do the practice either. So I better get building the CNC machine - that's what this is making
me think. What you are supposed to do is hook down the
bottom first - this is broken now, but that’s what you are supposed to do - and then slide
this in - pivot this into here - the problem is, it doesn't fit through that gap very easily.
So that's one thing you'd think they would have de-bugged.
With a new blade in lets carry on then. I am quite impressed with the radius of which
you can do these cuts. You can make really quite tight curves.
Here you can see I had the classic, on the fly, make up the 'A'. The centre bit, I realised,
I needed to keep a join there, or it wouldn't really be an 'A' any more.
So at this point I am really quite pleased that Sam has quite a short name.
So part of the problem with these scroll saws in general, is that the blade only cuts through
a very small amount. So it's just going up and down, like that. So it is those same teeth
the whole time, that are cutting. Which does make it a lot safer - in that you can almost
put your hand on it and your skin would move enough that it wont immediately rip the flesh
off you, like a bandsaw would, say. But at the same time, it super heats that one part
of the blade, which is why they tend to brake, and those teeth tend to go dull as well. The
majority of the teeth are never really used. Here is the underside. You can see here, I
have just got the vacuum cleaner just very crudely duct taped on there. That's the on
off switch. And this adjusts the speed.
[changing pitched noise] I've been running it at about four and a half.
That's the clamping mechanism. Which I have got to say, does feel slightly flimsy.
It's got some slots here - very small ones - presumably for a mitre gauge of some kind.
Wouldn't really want to be trying to do any precise cuts on this, I don't think. It doesn't
come with a mite gauge anyway. It cuts through, what, four to five mill thick
ash hardwood. OK. Well that sort of worked, lets switch it up
a bit and change from that thickness to give it a bit more of a test.
So we have got a piece here. It's just ash wood as well...
So it is still well within the range of the, sort of, presser foot thing. So lets see how
we go.. I'm guessing the speed wants to be lowered a bit. Let's try it.
Now this probably is ridiculously ambitions and not a practical solution you'd want to
be doing on a day-to-day basis, that's for sure. First impressions: it hardly really
cuts at all. Here it is slowed down. One thing to note is the dust extraction is just fantastic!
Throughout this whole thing there has hardly been any dust. With the vacuum going the suction
is really good, and the kerf of the cut is so small that the material it produces as
waste is a very small amount. So I am pressing really quite hard here to
get it to cut. This is of course, with the grain which is certainly going to be more
difficult than cross-cutting. At the same time, I am only doing a completely straight
cute here - a curve would probably be very ambitious.
So after cutting that little nodule out I can see there's not actually any burning on
it, which is very surprising. Here's the table again though. You wouldn't
want to use it for any length of time, because all that vibration goes straight through to
your hand. The compromise Dremel are making here, I suppose, is that this is a lightweight,
portable, easy to ship kind of tool. After that big heavy cut the blade's not actually
too hot... Well I am actually a little bit impressed
with that. Umm It made it through. It jammed up a few times. The dust collection is very
impressive. There is hardly any dust to speak of. Obviously you wouldn't want to be cutting
through that on a normal basis - compared to the band saw which would just slice through
in a couple of seconds. So for what it is I'm a mix of repulsed by
the plasticyness and the smell of it, and how sot of urr, flimsy it feels in a way.
Also quite impressed the design manages to pull off something that does actually work,
and will get through a bit like that. I'm not really seeing much of an advantage
of this over, a traditional scroll saw. I don't think you are every really likely to
take this out and wield it around by and. What's been your experience with scroll saws?
Do leave a comment below, especially if you have used this particular motosaw - or just
any scroll saw. Apart from that thanks so much for watching.
See you next time!