Dan Mooney's Puzzle Stocking Stuffer Tutorial

[Originally posted in this thread.]

Back in the '70's I was looking thru a wooden puzzle book, they had a picture, (drawing actually) of a puzzle piece. They said if you make 12 identical pieces, you could put them together into a cube. Took me about 2 hours to figure out how to put it together the first time, been making them ever since. they make nice stocking stuffers. This one the pieces are ¾" square and 4½" long, but you could use any size square stock, I still have to put a finish on these.


Make 12 of these...



To make one of these.

Stuart Ablett said:

That is very cool, can you give us some more details?

Sizes would be nice, looks like a job for the Dado set

Click to expand...

I hope this will make sense, I'm better at doing than explaining

This gives the basic dimensions, but any size can be used as long as the stock is square.


I made a sled and set the width of the dado blade the same width as the stock.


I use a centerline on the sled and the stock.


Cut the center dado





Rotate the stock 90 degrees toward you cut right dado





Then trim the ends to the length that suites your eye.


I made a tray to hold all the pieces together for sanding, that makes it easy to use a random orbit sander
but be gentle with the sanding, if you go too far the fit will be sloppy when you put the puzzle together.