The Parker Foot Treadle Jigsaw

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If electric jigsaw are too loud and obnoxious for you, try Tom Parker's wooden foot-powered jigsaw for your cutting needs.
If electric jigsaw are too loud and obnoxious for you, try Tom Parker's wooden foot-powered jigsaw for your cutting needs.
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An in-depth diagram of the pieces and sizes needed for your own treadle jigsaw.
An in-depth diagram of the pieces and sizes needed for your own treadle jigsaw.

As handy as the things are, electric jigsaws — at least cheap ones — can be pretty obnoxious to use. They’re awfully noisy, and because they tend to vibrate a good bit they lack the intimate “feel” of a quality tool.

Here, to remedy the situation, is my set of plans for a wooden jigsaw that you can power with your foot while you work to the rhythmic snik-snik-snik of a sewing machine treadle.

Treadle Machines for Cheap

Treadle sewing machines have to be one of the finest bargains around. I paid a junk dealer just $15.00 for an old Domestic in perfect condition. The frame and treadle are lovely, ornate castings with a beautiful finish and the hefty flywheel makes for flawlessly smooth operation. Best of all, in most cases a treadle can be used “as is”, so that you can actually switch back and forth between sawing and sewing.

(For an even greater bargain in treadle sewing machines, try the local dumps. While / was still located up north, a couple of my staff members found not one, not two, but three perfectly good foot-powered machines — among many other goodies! — on a single half-hour forage through the Madison, Ohio municipal dumping grounds. — MOTHER.)

  • Published on Mar 1, 1976
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