This post is about a custom puzzle that highlights a number of difficulties I ran into while cutting it. I had previously cut a puzzle that was cut into four sections and each section had a different piece style. Meeting of the Minds. I made a blog entry about that puzzle and shared the link on various Facebook puzzle groups.
Not long after, I was contacted by a customer interested in a puzzle cut in a similar fashion. Over several days and emails, we settled on an image of a painting she had commissioned of a beloved cat. The cat’s name is Audrey, and the painting was by “Silver”, and the customer had the artist’s permission to use it however she liked.
I received the digital scan in the middle of November. I printed it and mounted it on a 13″ x 19″ piece of 1/4″ cherry Appleply. The plan was to start cutting it the day after Thanksgiving.
Well, man’s plans do not always survive reality. My shop is heated by a wood stove. We often have burn bans forced on us by the county due to atmospheric conditions that hold wood smoke in the air. One of these bans was placed in effect the morning I started cutting. If I sound annoyed, I am. We live outside of city limits and houses are spaced fairly far apart. My address is just inside the burn ban area. My immediate neighbor to the south of me is not. I could be standing outside breathing smoke from his place, but I cannot burn my own.
This is a common wintertime problem for me. And, actually, when it gets too cold, I cannot cut even with the wood stove burning. The shop has some insulation but is hard to get above 45 or 50 degrees if it is colder than about 15 or 20 outside. I can put on thermal underwear and thick coats, but my fingers need to be warm to cut well.
After a week and a half of forced delay, I was able to get started on cutting. We had decided on three sections of different piece styles. One side of the background was to be a swirly type of piece. The other half of the background was to be composed of the dragon tails style of pieces. The cat herself was to be cut with my normal piece style.
Color line cutting of the cat was time consuming. From my notes, it took about an hour and a half to get to this point. This includes cutting the edges of the puzzle, the four cat figurals along the top, and color line cutting the three sections.
Up to now, everything was going great. I started next on the left-hand section for the swirly cuts.
I started to have some adhesion issues with the image lifting from the wood after cutting. It was not a problem with the paper separating. Something happened to make the adhesive fail. I was spending large amounts of time regluing individual pieces of image back to the wood. Looking at the above picture, you can guess how frustrating that was to get everything perfectly aligned until the glue set! Finally, the worst happened. One of the pieces tore. It is pictured below.
I tried to glue it, but the results were horrible. It was at this point that I threw in the flag. I contacted the customer and apologized for the delay. This was the first week of December, and I just had to walk away from the project to decompress a bit. The picture below was as far I had made it. I ended up cutting a couple of the wood comparison puzzles during this time before I felt motivated to resume this project.
I reprinted the image the day after Christmas. Abraded the back with 220 grit paper to roughen it up for the adhesive to stick. Wiped it down with rubbing alcohol to remove any greases, oils, or other residues that might have been on the printer paper. Did the same with the piece of wood. Cooked it in the press.
Down to the shop I went. Cutting started well and ended up with the three same sections as shown above. The top and bottom sections of the puzzle were rounded, so I had some cut offs to examine. And I’ll be darned if I did not have more adhesion problems! What the heck!
I was in a quandary at this point. I finally decided to check the operation of my dry mount press. Oh, boy, did I find a problem! I took the heat probe from my smoker and put it in the press. The dial on the press was set at 200 degrees, the temperature gauge on the press was indicating 185 degrees, and the smoker probe was indicating only 171 degrees. This probe is guaranteed accurate to within 2.7 degrees for this temperature range. The adhesive I use needs a minimum temperature of 170 degrees to properly activate.
So, I brought the mounted puzzle back up to the house and recooked it at a measured 180 degrees. From this point on, I had zero problems with any paper lifting! I will be writing a post about dry mount press issues and maintenance in the future.
What I did have a problem with next was my saw! I was two thirds of the way done, and the saw started to sound like a meat grinder or tree shredder. My trusty DeWalt was shaking and vibrating like crazy. What does this puzzle have against me?
I shifted over to my Hawk and resumed cutting. I had to change the type of blade to do this. The Pegas MGT blades I like to use with the DeWalt tend to exhibit rough cuts on the puzzle surface with the Hawk. I discussed this in an earlier blog post. The Hawk is a great saw for many things, but it is not my preferred saw for puzzle cutting. Actually, I should say that I am unable to use my preferred saw blade on the Hawk while cutting puzzles. If I use a different blade, it works fine, I just have more tear out on the bottom side.
Fortunately, I had placed an order for a new saw the prior week. I knew the DeWalt was going to need some work. Also, following my saw comparisons of the prior summer, I wanted to try one of the Pegas style saws. I really like the DeWalt but wanted to have the adjustability of getting rid of as much blade movement as possible. I had not found a used one in my area, so ended up buying my first brand new saw. I went with a Seyco ST-21. The wait for it to arrive incurred another short delay. The new saw actually arrived pretty quickly. (As a side note, I am really impressed with Seyco’s customer service. When I called to order the saw, he was on vacation skiing with his family. He took my order over the phone, and I received the saw within ten days. This was even including a multiday delay caused by my bank because I had not made a large purchase on this card before. Delivery was further delayed by winter weather somewhere in Montana.)
I assembled the new saw and immediately started cutting on this puzzle again. (Discussing this saw will be another future blog entry.) I finally finished cutting this puzzle on the 19th of January. I finished the back with Danish oil and shipped it out on the 26th of January. Once the adhesive issue was resolved and a working saw obtained, this was a fun puzzle to cut. I had the feeling this puzzle had special meaning for the customer, so that made it a joy for me to complete it!
I guess you can say it is a very unique puzzle, as there are probably not many puzzles cut using three completely different brands and two types of cutting action scroll saws! The cut size is 15 1/4″ tall, and 12 1/2″ wide. There are 221 pieces with seven figurals. Plus, the four figurals from the original destroyed puzzle were fine, so they were included for a total of 225 pieces. Four of them just don’t fit! Pictures of the finished puzzle follow.
There were a lot of delicate pieces and sharp points, so I took extra care in packing this puzzle. Thanks to frequent Amazon boxes crossing our threshold, I have a lot of neat packing material I can reuse instead of throwing in the trash.
Two months from inception to completion. That is nuts! The customer appears to be happy with it now that she has it. I waited to post this until I was sure she had a chance to complete it. Her review of it is here: Rebecca’s Wooden Jigsaw Puzzles: Silver, Audrey
For that size of puzzle, some viewers may think that 221 pieces is not enough. However, the swirly and dragon tails styles of pieces take up a lot of space. If I cut them too small (i.e. thin), they become very delicate. Additionally, they take a lot of time to cut, and so the costs go up even though there are less of them.
I will be fixing the DeWalt saw at some point. There are a lot of how-to videos on YouTube University. That is pretty low on the priority list though. Looks nice lined up with the others!
As always, please contact me directly if you are interested in a custom puzzle for yourself. bob@fivefrogswoodworking.com
And check my Etsy store to see if anything interests you. I promise that big leaf puzzle will not bite you! FiveFrogsWoodworking – Etsy
Happy puzzling!
Bob