Gunnar Asplund
	Mirko Blasevic
	Göran Jälkentalo

 

Gunnar Asplund
Gunnar and Barbo	My name is Gunnar Asplund and I was born in a village called Våghalsgruvan ( it's about 3 kilometers from the Ludvika town). It's seated in the country of Dalarna, in Sweden. I am 68 years old and have been working 45 years for the SKANSKA building & construction company. I have woodcarving and scrollsawing as a hobby . But after my retirement it's been only just scrollsawing. I use a saw called Hegner No.1, a very good saw. In former times one had to saw by hand. It took me seven weeks to saw The Dome Clock. My drawings I get from the US. There are many corporations who sell very nice patterns that I have used. My wife Barbo beautifully paints those things that I cut out from Finnish birch plywood (animals, brownies and trolls). The patterns that I carve in the wood are very old, they were to be found 800 years ago. They were decorations on household utensils and furniture. I also made pieces of furniture with patterns on it. Very beautiful things. To that I can add a lot of decorative things I construct & cut for the garden, to arrange flowers in, and birds nests and similar things. I am also a member of the SAW and I arrange Scroll Saw Picnics in Sweden. You are welcome to write to me. Maybe you have other ideas about scrollsawing you like to tell me.. Gunnar and Barbo
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Mirko Blasevic
	I am 32 years old and originally from Bosnia. My family and I arrived in Sweden 8 years ago. I am married and I have four children. In Bosnia I worked as a car-electrician. I had two brothers and one sister.. Sadly I lost my younger brother in the war. He was only 21 years old. Serbian forces took our city and I was hurt in a battle only some months before we moved to Sweden. We heard that Sweden did welcome refugees so we paid the bus with our last money and arrived in Sweden in December of 1992. After some different camps we arrived in northern Sweden on Christmas Eve 1992. I had never seen so much snow in my entire life, and the temperature was down at minus 28 degree  (Celcius). But we didn´t complain since we got food and  a roof over our heads. We have been moving around a bit after that and now we live in the central part of Sweden in a city called Motala. Some years ago I started scrolling, first by hand and later on, on a used Hegner-machine. I still use that one and have produced quite a lot during the years. It helps a bit to make a living for the family. I also have a lot of contact with the famous Gösta Dahlquist and Gunnar Asplund here in Sweden. This last year I have also been selling patterns from USA on the Swedish market. You can see my website here. Mirko
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Göran Jälkentalo
Mirko Ylva	Göran´s interest in scroll-cutting started when he visited his uncle in his workshop in 1940 as a little boy. But his life turned in another direction. He got a job working in the wood log cutting and later as a carpenter. A bit later in life he started - together with his wife Ylva - to build small cottages - from blueprints to ready to move in. At the age of 50 his interest in scroll-cutting finally got him into it seriously again. Mainly his projects are pictures made with the old deep-intarsia technique out of solid wood. Most requested is landscape motifs. And remember - the nature of deep-cut intarsia; all of these pictures have two sides... In the lower left hand corner are two pictures of all that was left from an all time high cutout,  after a fire where both their workshop and their home was burnt down. To the left you see part of an article where Göran shows the removed cutout. It is 15 mtrs (=49 feet) long leafy branch, with 138 little leafs, and the total cutting length is approximately 45 mtrs( = 148 feet). And the branch is only ca 2 mm wide . Two pieces of a total thickness of 20 mm was cut together. It is cut in mahogany & walnut. To the right the finished picture. This was a once in a lifetime job, but - Göran did it twice. It so happened that their son was running into the workshop at the very moment Göran & Ylva were leaving and there was a crash and a big disaster. So the only thing to do was to start all over again..... Goran and Ylva

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