Plexiglass Crafts for Dummies

Not made with a band saw

 It's bad enough to find one of those old eHow.com posts where the "contributors" (as the site called it's greed-sucking freelancers) misinterpreted the questions they were allegedly answering, but it's even worse when the "answer" contained misinformation. Unfortunately, that syndrome seemed to happen with startling regularity. One of the staffers turned up a new one not long ago, Esperance Barretto pretending to know "How to Carve Plexiglass" at the mother site.

A craftsman can, indeed, carve plexiglass, although it's relatively rare to find any large chunks of the stuff. As a general rule (and according to one of Bareretto's references, which she apparently didn't take the time to read) you use a rotary tool like a Dremel® with the various burs and other fine-detail shaping tools. You can also create 3D effects by layering multiple sheets of the stuff, covered by another of Esperance's references she didn't read.

According to Esperance, however (after some boring detail about the history and properties of acrylic, Here's what you do:

1. "Trace the design from your drawing pattern on the plexiglass sheet."
2. "Carve out the drawing pattern with a band saw."
3. "Rub fine sandpaper over the newly cut edges,"

We submit that Barretto did not tell us how to carve plexiglass, she told us how to cut the stuff. If that's not bad enough, here's the English Lit grad's take on how to use a band saw:

"Position the band saw on the surface of the plexiglass sheet, and carefully run the saw along the design line created by the marker pen. Run the band saw at a speed of 2,300- to 7,500-feet-per-minute."

The fact that most people don't have a variable-speed band saw notwithstanding, you do not "Position the band saw on the surface" of a workpiece. Perhaps had Barretto had some vague notion of what the tool is, she would have known this. She is, however, the same person who warned her readers that they should,

"Always wear goggles and gloves when carving with plexiglass."

Uh, yeah. No wonder Esperance is picking up another Dumbass of the Day award...

SE - POWER TOOLS