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I've been following an excellent webcomic for some time, Gunnerkrigg Court, and one of my grand-nieces enjoys it as well. Recently, thinking about what I could do for her birthday, it occurred to me that one of the pictures from it would make a great nano puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle made with very tiny pieces. Challenging and fun.
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As you can see, I printed the pattern out and followed it with a jeweler's saw. I found that cutting all the rows first, then crossing with the columns, gave me control over the individual pieces as they became separated. I could hold down the pieces around the cut and it was a lot easier than trying to get my fingers close enough to the blade to keep it on track.
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My saw table wasn't big enough for the whole thing, actually, so I started out by cutting it near the middle, then cutting the sides in two, so that the patch wouldn't hang over the edge of the saw table and drop pieces. In the picture above, the left side is all cut, the upper right side is cut along the horizontals, and the lower right side has not been cut at all.
In case you're wondering, it's four inches by six inches, and there are 280 pieces. Once it's all done, this is how it looks:
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I had to pick the pattern label off the backs of the pieces, one by one. The puzzle was made on 1mm birch plywood, here's how the back looks:
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I couldn't find a proper box for it, so I printed the picture on a piece of stiff paper to fold into the top, and used a somewhat stiffer piece of paper for the bottom, making the box just barely large enough for it to lay flat when solved, if one chooses. Note that this puzzle has never been completely apart, as I reassembled it piece by piece as I worked my way through it. A good shake, and ...
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