An early Christmas gift

A few weeks before Christmas I was doing my usual blitz of ornament making. This year I chose to use the scroll saw which I’ve neglected for the last couple of years. Turns out there was a reason for the neglect.

I’ve had difficulty for the last few years with blades pulling out of the holder when I was half way through the cut. A few people have looked at it and others have suggested solutions. I’ve bought and replaced parts and thought, in the end, my problems were due to operator error. So I’d try again.

Then I couldn’t even get two centimetres of a cut made before the blade would pop out of the bottom holder. I’d put it back in, try again and out it would pop. In addition the saw was making a rather unpleasant noise that scroll saws shouldn’t make. Fed up, I got out my jeweller’s saw and cut several of the ornaments by hand. It took longer than it would have with a co-operative scroll saw, but I didn’t have one of those.

Richard wanted to help me so he volunteered to take the saw apart to see if he could figure out what the problem was. He got the saw apart and determined that there was a bearing that was completely seized. That wasn’t necessarily the reason the blades kept pulling out but it probably accounted for the noise. We found the number of the bearing on the parts page of the instruction manual but weren’t sure where to go from there. Since the part was fairly small, and Jake is very good at figuring out how to fix things I took it to him. He did a bit of searching but wasn’t able to find anyone in Didsbury who had bearings small enough. He said if I could find a bearing I could use the drill press to press it out and press the new one in. I wasn’t too keen on that solution but I did start looking on websites of Calgary companies to see if I could find the proper replacement bearing. I found one place that had it in stock.

To the rescue!

As soon as I could, I headed off to get a new bearing. The person I talked to said he didn’t think they had anything that small but he looked in the computer and found what I needed. First problem solved. I asked if he knew where I could get the bearing replaced and he suggested I’d need a machine shop. I got on my phone and searched for machine shops in the area. I picked one that had been in business for quite a while and advertised that it was a family run company. I called, explained my problem and asked if they could help. He suggested that I bring the part in and he would look at it.

The door into the shop opened onto a dark hallway with a concrete floor and a sign pointing to a door down the hall to the right. I opened that door and saw a small room with a desk, a computer and various parts of machines on the desk and on the window sill. From the office I could see part of the shop itself with welding tanks, a drill press and other machines I didn’t recognize.

I waited for a few minutes until a short stocky man came around the corner. I explained what I needed and he took the scroll saw part and the new bearing out of the bag. He asked if I had a new bushing and when I said no, he turned the part over carefully in his hand and declared, “We make this work. We use the old one.” He asked me when I wanted the job finished and I told him I’d like it in the next couple of days. “I try my best. I do it as soon as I can,” he said. I wrote down my phone number on a pad of paper and he said he would call me when it was done.

I was a bit surprised when I got a call the next day saying the part was ready. It was late in the day and I told him I couldn’t pick it up then, but I’d be by the next day. When I arrived at his shop the next day I saw the part in a plastic bag sitting on the desk on top of the pad on which I had written my name and number. He came out of the back room and explained to me that he had found a new bushing and replaced the old one. He put the new bearing in and showed me the old one he took out. He also explained that he looked at the other bearing in the part and found it wasn’t seated properly so he pressed it back into the middle where it should be. I thanked him and asked how much I owed him. “No, no,” he said, “nothing.” I protested that it had cost him time and asked if I couldn’t pay him something. Again he said no but suggested that I write a Google review if I was happy with his work. I thanked him again and said I would write the review as soon as I got home. I also told him I would recommend his shop to anyone who needed a machine shop. He wished me a Merry Christmas and we were both smiling broadly when I left the shop.

I wrote the review when I got home and have had occasion to recommend him to one person so far. Getting the part fixed was a wonderful Christmas gift. I cleaned up the scroll saw, Richard was able to put the saw back together. I was then able to finish the ornaments much more quickly than I could have done with my jeweller’s saw.

Cleaning up the saw for reassembly

Sometimes when I watch too much of the news I’m convinced that the world is going to hell in a handbasket but then I meet someone like the machinist who, right in the middle of a busy time, was willing to spend his time to fix a niggly little part for me. He did more than I asked because he takes pride in his work and wanted the saw to work for me. It might not have taken him very long, I don’t know. What I do know is that he was generous with his time and skill and added something special to my preparations for Christmas. There is a story behind all of the objects I make and at the heart of this story is a man whose name I don’t know but whose smile I will always remember.

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