Available here If you want to build your own 3D wooden Puzzle.
Never have your kid’s birthday party at a Chucky Cheese unless you love kayos and want to go deaf. Of course, my kids had a great time and brought home a sack full of cheap party favors and toys. You know, the ones that you could put a quarter in a vending machine and get a toy.
One of these toys was a plastic cube puzzle. It was only about one inch tall and came apart into six pieces. It took me forever to solve the puzzle.
While I was fiddling around trying to solve this puzzle, my daughter said, “Hay Dad, you can make a version out of wood.” Therefore, I took my daughter’s advice, plotted out my version on graph paper, and went to work. I made four of them give away as Christmas gifts last year.
I resurrected the build this year when a friend wanted me to do a craft bazaar with her. I thought this was the perfect thing to make and sell at the bazaar. I went to work and made twenty-one of them. During the weeklong event, I only sold two. Not quite the big seller I thought they would be. Luckily, the jewelry boxes I made made the trip worthwhile.
To make them, I use a stack dado head in my table saw and cut out the notches 3/4 of an inch at a time. I made a quick jig in the same manner as you would if you were going to cut a box joint. In my first attempt, the pieces fit together too tightly, so I added a shim to the dado head to solve that problem.
To dress up the edges, I used a chamfer router bit and ease the edges. The bearing on the bit did not allow it to chamfer the inside corners, so I used a file to clean up the corners by hand. This handwork added a lot of time to the construction of the puzzles. I wanted to recoup that time in my selling price, and I think that extra cost is what made them a slow-mover at the bazaar.
I finished the cubes with Tried and True Danish oil, which is kid-safe and food-safe and has a zero VOC finish.
Even though I only sold two puzzles at this bazaar, I view the leftover inventory as a deposit into my woodworking 401K plan. I will be able to sell them in the future on Etsy, my website, or even at another bazaar.
Who would have thought that a kid’s prize toy from Chucky Cheese could have sparked a fun project to build?
As of the writing of this post, I still have several in stock so that you can purchase a puzzle cube here.
Once you have your cube and give up trying to solve it, I made a video showing it step-by-step.
