Fritz Flop Puzzle for the "non laserers".

Boys and Girls,
 

Not trying to be insulting, however, I’m eager to get more of you little boys and big GIRLS (not figurative) into puzzles to exercise theirs, their family’s and friends’ grey matter (and maybe the chagrin of their nemeses), so don’t feel left out ‘cause you don’t have a laser cutter. 
I have stepped back in time,

to an era before lasers and monotonous mono toned ducks, and help you revel in the joys of puzzle making.

 

In a past project, I have demonstrated how to make the pieces out of pine (cubes… so I won’t repeat it here) and for this post, I have chosen my latest Fritz Flop Puzzleproject to make the box with “conventional" powered  tools.  

For a first non-laser exercise, this puzzle was chosen as it only requires straight or 90° cuts using a tablesaw (maybe with a sled) and/or a mitre saw… other boxes would require either a scroll saw, bandsaw, jigsaw … and maybe in spite of the Charged  Mechanical gods’,  the forbidden  Celullose-Lignin gods’ endorsed  hand tools.

 

FAIW, the only use of the laser was to engrave the logo on the base. If you look at gallery picture #6, it may be noticed that the engraving is a tad dodgy.  Unfortunately, while buffing, the spinning buffer ripped the box out of my hands and shattered on the concrete floor… fortunately only into 6 pieces. Not having the laser cut tenons, it was possible to reglue, however a lot of sanding was required which sanded away a lot of the engraving infill… and it’s just about impossible to re-engrave over a previous job… small price to pay for not having to make a new box.

    

Not taking advantage of the precision of a laser, the starting point is an accurate internal dimensions of the box…  55mm x 55mm x 37mm (which allows a 1mm wiggle room in 3D)

which “generated” the following cutlist,

 

based on my standard 18mm³ cubes, 

however,  I will provide dimensions based on ¾ in³ cubes further below (if I don’t forget).

 

I set up my miter saw for cutting the base out of walnut, which I will use as the reference,

Now add 2 x the thickness of your board to the 37mm height and cut a strip on your tablesaw,

Using the above setup of the width of the base, cut two sides out of the strip, and a piece for the top to be trimmed later. Add 2 x the board thickness to reposition the stop block, 

and cut the front and back.

Now it’s a case of aligning your ducks and gluing up.  

I buffed the insides first as I will be using CA which seems to work well on buffed surfaces.  I used my 123 Blocks for alignment as CA glue will stick to anything… it sticks to the 123 Blocks but is easier to remove without destruction, than from my normal wooden assembly jig,

There was more than normal squeeze out of CA due to the lack of tenons as with the laser cuts.

 

Make the 5 puzzle pieces out of your nominated cubes cut by your chosen method (or my suggested in this project),

 

Link to the measurements,which include both metric and imperial based on 3/4” cubes (I didn’t forget).

All I did was take the metric SketchUp diagram and resize from 18mm to ¾”.

For the inside of the box, you will need to allow 1/16” wiggle room in all directions. This means that the base will be 2 ¼” + 1/16” square and the height 1 ½” + 1/16”… depends on the precision of your pieces, you may need to extend the wiggle room by another 1/16”… now you know why I hate imperial.  

You may bugga up the first box, but it will give you the trend for future boxes/puzzles, when you get the bug.

 

I have used a nominal thickness of 4mm, however, you need to use twice your chosen width to change the dimensions described in the body of this post.  Your choice of board thickness will determine the height of the sides and the length of the front depending on the assembly design you choose.  Start with the inside box measurements and add 2 x the board thickness to the dimensions of  any overlapping pieces. 

 

Now you are armed to zip down to your workshop and make a small fortune,

 

The 3DW model with imperial measurements for the BOX based on 3/4" cubes,

 

Anyone interested in my puzzles (or other authors’), you can see them all here in my “Puzzle Collection” .

If interested in any of mine (LBD), measurements can be made available on request for anyone not familiar with SketchUp… though a working knowledge of SketchUp’s navigation (as opposed to its design/use features) and access to 3DW could be of benefit.

Kids love ‘em and most of us are still kids.

 

  

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