Turn Your Pictures Into Wooden Jigsaw Puzzles

Here's a really cool project you can easily do on a scroll saw, and that is, turn a picture into a puzzle. Here's what I've done already. I took a picture of one of my favorite animals, an elk, and printed it out on my computer. So just regular old computer paper. I then used spray adhesive, and I fastened it to this piece of quarter inch plywood that I had laying around. Once that glue is dry, I trimmed up the edges, so that the edge of the picture was perfectly even, with the edge of the plywood. Then, I used an aerosol can of shellac, and I sprayed a couple of coats of shellac over the top of the whole thing, just to help protect the paper a little bit. Next step, we can come to the scroll saw, and have a look at how to make this picture become a puzzle. Well, I've got a good start, on getting my jigsaw puzzle going here. So, let's talk about blade selection, and what it's gonna take, to make this go well, and come out nice. I'm using a number two blade. Now, the general rule of thumb is, with these number two blades, and they have about 20 teeth per inch, number two blade would be used, in quarter inch material and less. So, that's talking about the thickness of the material. What that real fine tooth count is doing for me, is giving me a great surface finish, on the edge of these puzzle pieces, so there isn't gonna be any sanding required at all. So, that's my blade selection, it's gonna work great in this quarter inch plywood. I'm ready to keep going and finish turning my elk, into a puzzle. Let's talk about a couple of keys, for making jigsaw puzzles, on your scroll saw here. One is, notice that I'm not actually using the pressure foot here, and the reason for that is, I don't want that foot dragging across the top of my picture, and even with the shellac on there, taking the chance that I'm gonna scratch something here. So, holding that pressure foot up off the work, and that means I've gotta be careful about holding it down. Did get a little bit of chatter, every once in a while, and that's just from me not pushing down quite hard enough. The other thing, as you're making your pieces, just remember all the jigsaw puzzles you've put together, and, one thing I'm trying to do, is get them to interlock, so that when everything is put together, it stays together. So, as I make these cuts, I'm making it, so that there's a concave, a convex, and then another concave, so that when I put those parts together, they're gonna stay locked together. So really, it's a pretty simple process, and it's a lot of fun. You can take any picture that you have, and turn it into a puzzle, just like I'm doing here.