Test of scroll saw

I have not done any work on the coronet since before Christmas. Since I am beginning to get worried about finishing them before June, I thought it was about time I got back to work. My eldest son got a scroll saw for his birthday last November. I decided I would try to do the cut out work on it to try and speed up the metal work. Now I have never used a scroll saw, so I was a little "out to sea" when it came to what kind of blades I needed or how this would work. Anyway, I found some information on line on the Olsen saw blade site that seemed to imply it would not be a problem to use the scroll saw on non-ferrous metal. I ordered a set of blades (size 2/0 and 2). I got blades without pegs because they came much smaller and I was worried about the tiny points in my pattern. My son then told me his saw only took blades that had a pin. ok, I ordered another set with pins. They were much bigger, and I was unsure about whether I would be able to make the sharper corners. since he owned the saw, I thought I would invite him along for the trial run. As we were looking through the instruction manual, I noticed it said this brand of saw could be used with blades that had pins, but also blades without them. Yay! Now I could use the much smaller blades.

I started by covering the sheet of 22 gauge brass with masking tape and drawing the pattern on that. Then I had to drill some holes in the metal to get access for the blade in the closed patterns. The center of the pattern had a small hole, and I thought I could drill that without making a starter hole and cutting around the hole. Well, as it turns out, I couldn't. The drill badly distorted the metal around the hole and left a couple large shards of metal sticking out. I tried to flatten out the distortion a bit with a hammer so it would not scratch the table of the scroll saw. You can see a couple of the hammer marks. I made the rest of the holes with a much smaller drill bit, and there was very little distortion, all of which was cut off. The top picture shows the cut out piece with the masking tape still attached. The lower picture has the tape removed. These have not been filed or sanded to remove the sharp edges yet. However, I am happy withe the way it came out. I did break 5 saw blades. According to one youtube video I was watching breaking lots of blades while cutting metal is inevitable so I am not going to worry about it. I do have to buy more blades though before I start on the big piece. this is only one repeat of the pattern. There are 6 on the final coronet. So 5 broken blades times 6 repeats. I could break as many as 30 blades if I stay like this. It is exciting to see it working out though.