On a recent visit to my wife’s office at Michigan Virtual School, I spied with my little eye one of her company’s pennants, and I thought it would make a nice jigsaw puzzle. My wife got a PDF containing the graphic from a coworker which I had printed at the copy shop. On photo paper it would have cost 40 bucks to have it duplicated, so I opted for a poster quality print. I mounted the image on quarter inch baltic birch plywood, and, then, because it was not photo paper, I gave it several coats of lacquer. Most of the pieces are at least 1 inch by 1 inch so they are easy to handle. I cut the exterior of the puzzle with a # 5 blade. Because the puzzle is 30 inches long, and my scroll saw is only a 16”, I had to make the initial dividing cut with a spiral blade. I think I used a 2/0. You can see how distinct the kerf is in the last image. I cut the interior of puzzle itself with Flying Dutchman Superior Puzzle blades. I de-fuzzed the back edges with 220 sandpaper. A smaller image was mounted on eighth inch plywood and then onto an appropriately sized box. My wife assembled it and counted the 167 pieces.
This will be my wife’s entry in her office’s holiday gift exchange this week.
Let me offer a bit of insight into the time and material needed to make this. Puzzles like this make wonderful gifts, but they are demanding to make and they are by no means cheap. I think my total time in this is about 6 hours and rough costs were(in US dollars):
printing: 26
plywood: 3
lacquer: 3
blades: 3
And, hard-to-account-for incidental expenses, like adhesives, sandpaper, sanding mops, shop expenses, etc.
Here at lumberjocks we rarely talk about the costs of projects or the time they they take, so I thought I’d share some of what it takes to put one of these together. Under conditions closer to ideal than what I’m working under, a scroll sawyer could reduce the time required rather significantly. I work between my garage(unheated in mid-Michigan), a back room, my dining room and my basement. I don’t want to spray adhesives or coatings in my house, but I can’t leave them in the cold to cure, so I move things around a lot. I don’t have a dedicated space that allows me to work very efficiently.
I really like making these and they make a lasting gift that can be enjoyed many times over. So, I’ll keep at it, as inefficient as I am, doing what it takes. Occasionally, though, I do like to consider what it actually takes to put a project together.
Thanks for looking in lumberjocks.
Russ
Crafty Puzzles
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