Tangram puzzle pt 2.......

I had plenty time left in the shop tonight to play with the Tangram puzzle. The wood I had planed to thickness and stickered for a couple of days looked good. All four of them were flat and the bowing I thought I saw isn't there now. Time to put the finishing touches on this hand tool only project. I will have to hurry a bit because my youngest daughter is coming home today from North Carolina for xmas.

two puzzles out of this

I just eyeballed this for flatness. I looked down the long edges and faces and nothing jumped out at me so I sawed this in half. I had about an inch of wiggle room in the middle so I didn't have to go nutso with splitting this in two exactly.

square

I first made one long grain edge flat and square. I then squared an end grain edge off of that. This gave me two reference edges at a 90° to scribe lines for the opposite sides. I shot all four edges on the shooting board and touched up two edges with my edge plane. In the end I got a square that is square on all four corners both ways.

laying out

Splitting this distant in half is the hardest part of the layout. You could measure this but the dividers make better sense here. Once you split the distance the dividers are set for laying out all five pieces on this side.

used a combo square this time

You don't need a 45°saddle square to do the layout, a combination square will do the job too. On the half way mark draw a line for the middle size triangle.

draw another 45 from here for the first small triangle

a square appears

Once you layout the first small triangle the square is laid out too. One more layout line to mark.

last small triangle

 The dividers lay out the leg of the last small triangle (all the triangles are equilaterals).  Draw a line from the right hand point of the dividers to the bottom right corner of the square. Doing this marks this triangle and the parallelogram to the right.

layout done and all the lines are knifed

first saw cut frees the middle sized triangle

This is my third time sawing out a puzzle and I can't think of a better way to do this.

second saw cut

This is the hardest saw cut to make and it's also the longest one. Since I have more of these I want to do, I am going to make a jig to do this saw cut. It's hard to hold this and saw it at the same time. I think I'll make a 90° vee that is open at the apex so I can push this into and saw.

jumped the kerf

Sawing this whitish wood and trying to follow the knife line was difficult. This isn't too bad and I plan on sanding a round over on all the pieces so that should remove this evidence.

first two saw cuts done

flat edge to butt against the fence

I sawed the parallelogram off first and then freed the two small triangles. The last saw cut sawed the two large triangles into two.

jumped the kerf on the square

I don't think this will be a problem but I am spray painting them. At a minimum I'll have to sand this smooth.

pretty good at sawing plumb

doesn't lay up too good

fuzzies

I didn't knife the line all around but just did the top. The exit cut from the saw left all the edges a little ragged out.

much better

I sanded all the outside edges of both of the large triangles with a sanding sponge.  I'll do the other pieces when I do the round overs.

just shy of 5 1/2" square

I thought that this puzzle might have been too small but I like the size of it. It's compact but each piece seems large enough to see what it is. Next batter is making a box or something for this. That will have to wait as my wife and daughter just got home from the airport.

accidental woodworker

trivia corner
Who was the oldest person to have a number 1 hit on the top 40?
answer - Louis Armstrong at 66 years old for "A Wonderful World"

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