Death of a scroll saw

Hi all,
I had a bit of a disaster a couple of days ago when my scroll saw made its last cut. It hadn't been well for a while; a few months ago it jammed for a few seconds and then blew a fuse. I replaced the fuse, cleaned it and oiled it and it managed to struggle on for bit longer. However, it finally succumbed and whilst blowing a fuse it jammed again. I oiled it, replaced the fuse and unlinked the top and bottom parts of the saw to take the pressure off, but when I plugged it in there was a blue flash that scared the pants off me. It had blown its fuse again plus the house fuse in the consumer box taking out several other sockets at the same time. It also remained jammed. I had now had enough and chucked it outside for the next visit down our street of the scrap collectors.

Just a bit about the saw. It was an Excalibur 16 inch which I purchased about 6 years ago for around £400, so it wasn't cheap. However, I feel that it gave me good service even though I abused it by getting it to do stuff it wasn't designed for. I have never owned a table saw and, until a few weeks ago I'd never had a bandsaw, so all my DIY projects were done on the scroll saw, which was a lot of work.

It did give me a lot of pleasure and I made a lot of nice stuff with it. Like this box.

And this one.

I will miss it but I won't be replacing it. I will use my new bandsaw for DIY project and my creative vent will be serviced by the lathe. Should I need to do any small scroll saw work I will purchase a coping saw and do it by hand.

So what have I been up to on the lathe? Well not a lot really because my wife's had me decorating the bedroom which included removing the laminated floor and replacing it with carpet. I don't know who invented laminated flooring but I detest the stuff. Its cold, hard and noisy and deserves a trip to the tip to be with all the other rubbish. We inherited when we moved into our new bungalow and I've been slowly replacing it in every room. Here's what it looked like in the bathroom. A mess.

I made a bigger mess when I took it up.

 But it looked better once it was done.

Sorry that this post isn't very creative, but I did manage to finish making Xmas deccy blanks for my wife to decorate for the Xmas tree. Here is a few of the things I turned, that she has now finished.

Right that's it for now, I will be back on the lathe soon, poking a piece of wood with chisel and I've also got plans for my pyrography iron, so please watch this space.