The New Puzzle "Pseudo Ovolo"

Today's topic is about Juno's latest puzzle "Pseudo Ovolo" that he had started making on 30th January, 2017.

He bought timber that has been kiln dried from the local lumber dealer who he is familiar with. First of all, he made the timber a little thicker than the target measurement and rested it in the shed for a while. And then he re-worked the timber to the target measurement. Pseudo Ovolo is made with Karri (red-brown timber in the picture) and Silver Ash (white timber / citrus family tree).

This was the very first time using Karri for him, and he realised that Karri is difficult to handle and if he used up all the stock of Karri, this time may be the last time for using Karri.

 

After he processed the timber into sticks, he cut the elements from the sticks. At this stage, he has arrised some of the elements. For gluing each piece, he made a jig to support two elements of timber to be glued at right-angles. As you can imagine, there are so many jigs remaining in our workshop because he makes jigs every time he makes new puzzles.

As shown in the picture below, after he finished gluing the pieces made from Karri (red-brown), he cut the groove for reinforcement on each end of the piece. He prepared a replaceable sacrifice board (white board in the picture) in front of the piece to eliminate chip outs.

He had cut the white timber (Silver Ash, citrus family tree) a bit larger, and after gluing to the red-brown pieces, sanded them until it became the correct size.

Every red-brown piece was glued into an O-shape and then, it was cut to a C-shape. Herewith, the grains of the two ends of the C-shaped piece look linked and also the piece can be made accurately. The next step is arrising the edges of every piece.

Then, it was finally time for coating. A thin coat of lacquer spray makes timber more beautiful and protects timber from dirt.

After every piece was dried, he sorted the pieces by colours and grains, and then assembled pieces into a puzzle in which the timber colours and grains are matched.

Ta-da! Here is the puzzle "Pseudo Ovolo."

Juno named this puzzle "Pseudo Ovolo" because he was inspired when he saw Yavuz Demirhan's "Ovolo" and wanted to show his respect to Yavuz Demirhan.

Pseudo Ovolo is available on our website.
Juno and I hope that puzzle lovers would love Pseudo Ovolo.

Yukari

1/12 Scale Dining Table Set Has Been Completed!

I made a 1/12 scale table yesterday. This table is for the chairs that I have made.
 (See the details of the miniature chairs I have written. "1/12 scale miniature chairs", 
"Making Miniature Furniture")

At the beginning, I had to find off-cuts for making the table but unfortunately there was no right thickness of off-cuts in our workplace. Juno found a little thicker timber and made it the right thickness using the planer for me. I think I was lucky that I could get the same timber of chairs "Util" (another name is Sipo Mahogany).

The next step was the same as I had made chairs, I exported the drawing of the table to DXF format and then imported the data to the other software and made the data for the CNC router.

I'm not used to making the data and setting for the CNC router yet, and realised that there are many points that I have to be careful about. As you know, CNC routers are an automatic cutting machine which are controlled by a computer. I need to set up the coordinates, x, y and z. If I make mistakes for setting these coordinates, the milling bit (a kind of blade shaped like a drill blade) might hit or cut somewhere in the wrong place. Therefore, it's very important setting up the starting point accurately, you must instruct the machine where the x:0, y:0 and z:0 should be.
After the setting of x, y and z or whatever is done, it's finally the time to start. Switch on the motor for the water pump first, then switch on the CNC router. The water has the role to cool down the spindle motor of the CNC router.

As shown in the picture below, Juno attached a dust boot on to the head of the CNC router. On the other side of the head, there is a pipe joint and it can be connected to the hose of the dust collector. Personally, I like watching the machine carving the timber, it's a little disappointing having the dust boot, but when we cut something small, I don't think we need the brush.

Next to the CNC router's work, it's my turn, sanding the table top and legs. Honestly, this job was the most difficult one for me. The thick legs make the table stable but it doesn't look good. This time, I have made ordinary square-like table legs but next time (Yes, I'm going to make more chairs and tables) I would like to make different designed legs. This procedure is not only for sanding, I had to adjust the right size to the grooves under the table top. The puzzle master Juno helped me a lot, he made the curves of the legs nicely.

The last step was a bit exciting, adjusting the legs, side aprons and end aprons. I glued all the parts under the table top and made sure that these legs stand 90 degrees.
Until now, there was only flat timber and four short rods, but it became a table!

It's exciting to see it has been completed. Furthermore, I'm so happy to see the table with chairs!

I just remember the animation film "The Secret World of Arrietty." The story is about a girl named Arrietty and her family who live in a house secretly. As far as I could see in the animation film, their height seems to be 1/12 scale. If those tiny people in the film exist, they may love my 1/12 scale dining table set. I'm going to make more Arrietty's size of furniture.

Yukari

1/12 scale miniature chairs

If you were a reader who has read my blog before, you may know that I made some miniature chairs.Making Miniature Furniture  Our family business is making wooden puzzles, therefore there are timber off-cuts of puzzles. One day I was looking at those off-cuts and got the idea of making miniature furniture. I like miniatures so I thought this was a good idea.

The first miniature chair was made of plywood. It looked good and I made another chair and a park bench with good timber. Those three miniature chairs are 1/6 scale size.

After making 1/6 scale chairs, I made 1/12 scale miniature chairs as shown in the picture below. The reason I made 1/12 scale chairs is it's easy to get timber off-cuts and also 1/12 scale seems to be the common size of dollhouses.

I made up my mind that I'm going to make miniatures that have the same function and the same method of making as real ones. As you can see in the picture below, there are several holes in the frames. These are tenons. I could glue backrests but I thought a chair that was assembled with tenons is stronger than a glued one.

What made my hope feasible is the CNC router. Yes, I didn't make holes myself, this useful machine made holes. In the beginning, it needed some fine adjustments but once it was set up, it works really well.

After I finish making chairs, I'm going to make miniature tables for these chairs.

Yukari