The ceremonies are well suited for jigsaw puzzles as friends and relatives will come up and describe their memories and praises for the person coming of age. Each piece represents are part of the person and when assembled the person becomes whole. For this puzzle the customer wanted 13 pieces, as usually is the case, in "grid style".

As it happened (from my Journal archives)

February 4, 2008

Monday 4:39 pm - A very busy day today! No puzzle cutting, rather a lot of personal record keeping and working my list of unresolved puzzle order contacts for this month. A Bar Mitzvah puzzle which was first requested way back in October of 2006 (was not listed in The Puzzle Queue) was confirmed today after I did some prep work with the image improving the contrast. I've added this puzzle to the Puzzle Queue as #782, pushing down the other puzzles. Like other Bar Mitzvah puzzles I've done it will have 13 pieces (although some have had 12 or 14).

February 14, 2008

Thursday 7:20pm - Worked on improving the image contrast for the #782 Bar Mitzvah puzzle took a while before I was completely satisfied, also tweaked the image a bit, printed it, looks good.

Went to the shop in an unexpected rain squaw, cold and damp, just what I need, right? Had three layers of clothing and two layers on my head, so I was OK in the shop's chilly 53 degrees. Table saw work involves standing and moving around, unlike being still at a scroll saw while cutting a puzzle.

I prepared boards for the three puzzles and an extra one for #784. I also prepared seven (!) Compulsory boards, so I'll have plenty on hand if I have problems with the production cut for Compulsory #16. As it was raining, I normally would have called it a day as I only do sanding outside. However, as I now have this huge industrial air cleaner, I decided to turn it on where it was sitting (see the Feb 12 photo) and do the sanding just to the left of the machine, right next to the filter intake. I actually turned it on so it would be on while I was doing the table saw work. Both the dust from the table saw work and the board sanding disappeared into the machine, and while I wore a mask anyway, the shop air was certainly cleaner than normal after I was finished.

Returning home, I then mounted the prints for #782 and #783 and the two prints for #784.

Work will continue tomorrow. My goal is to get #782 and #783 completed and shipped. This weekend I'll do Compulsory #16 and start research on paper treatments for #784.

February 15, 2008

Friday 5:40pm - Today I focused on getting #782 and #783 done. The Bar Mitzvah puzzle grid cutting template took quite a bit longer than planned to design. The customer wanted "grid" style, but my "grid" styles have always been cut in a "dogmatic" style, for example 7 by 9 for 63 pieces, 3 x 4 for 12 pieces, etc. so a "grid" request for a requested 13 piece puzzle took a while to think out, while at the same time making sure the "head" piece around the Bar Mitzvah boy, Joshua, was nicely located. I ended up designing the grid in the "Springbok Puzzles" style of fairly specific rows (columns in this case) with the rows subdivided in a less restricted way. I remember my pet turtles all had 13 large tiles or "scutes" on their top shell surrounded by 24 smaller ones. The 13 scutes were arranged in columns of 4 on the left and 4 right side, with 5 in the center row for a total of 13. 24 smaller ones surrounded the 13. So I used this arrangement of large tiles for the design of the puzzle. The puzzle came out looking excellent, about as nice a puzzle as I'm capable of cutting for this application.

February 16, 2008

Saturday 3:05 pm - Ended up shipping both #782 and #783 today!