My Shopmaster scroll saw had seen better days. In mid-July it stopped working, the thing would hum when powered on, but nothing moved. With everything unpluged, I couldn't manually move the arm, which it normally could do. I was pretty sure something had siezed up inside either the arm mechanisum or the motor.
I had been considering buying a new Scrollsaw for the past year. The Shopmaster was a good introductory saw, it made it clear it was a tool I would used regularly, but it felt limiting.
I started looking around for the "next step up" in scrollsaws. I contacted Steve Goode, over at
Scrollsaw Workshop, who recommended the Dewalt 788. Which prompted further research.
So this weekend my own Dewalt 788 arrived from Amazon. Compared to my old one, this is a serious pieces of machinery. It assembled rather easily, although I had to run dwon to the hardware store to get a wrench. Once in place, I fired it up and
wow, what a dramatic improvement. This thing is amazingly quiet without any real hint of vibration. I didn't have any projects ready to cut, but I did a few tests and it didn't disappoint.