This puzzle is the last puzzle I made before my shoulder surgery of June 17, 2004.

While I love to cut puzzles in my Swirl Curl, Long Round and Creative styles, every now and then I like to cut a "Grid" cut puzzle. I have developed the concept of "False Edges" in this style, something not readily available from other puzzle makers. My idea for this style came from the old Milton-Bradley 1000 Big Ben puzzles which were made in this style in the 1950's. Some modern wooden jigsaw puzzle makers do cut in the "Grid" style, but the pieces tend to be uniformly of the "two ins and two outs" variety and are generally scorned by collectors. J. K. Straus, No. 222, Brooklyn, NY made grid cut wooden jigsaw puzzles for quite a few years; these puzzle attract some interest on eBay, but nowhere near on the same level as Pastimes and other classic wooden jigsaw puzzles.

As it happened (from my Journal archives)

June 14, 2004

9:21 pm - This afternoon I cut puzzle #549, K. Chin's "Lone Cypress, Pebble Beach" for this month's 100 Puzzle Project puzzle - #36. I cut it my rare "Grid with False Edges" style. The puzzle was somewhat difficult to cut as there are a lot of straight lines in the cut, and my current batch of blades has a considerable variety of tendencies, wanting to angle sharply to the right, slightly to the right as is normal or even slightly to the left depending on the blade; plus the angle varies a bit according to how fast the wood is fed into the blade and even by how long the blade has been running!.... so I had to get the "character" of each blade and cut accordingly.

"Grid cut" puzzles are scorned by most puzzle collectors, and as this puzzle is small, with just 108 pieces, anyone who wants to collect a Custom Puzzle Craft 100 Puzzles Project puzzle may have an opportunity to do so at nominal cost. I'll post a picture here tomorrow morning and start the auction sometime tomorrow afternoon. To add something a little different, I plan to time myself on my assembly time and post it in the auction as a challenge. [Note: my assembly time was about 15 minutes].