A Laser Plagiarised “TRIVET”

Boys and Girls,

Yet another victim of this C19 albatross (sorry to all the albatrosses reading this). Because of the lockup, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time sitting on my rrrs without moving and playing a video game to the point that my ankles were swelling and I was trepidated by the thought of DVT.

Consequently I was forced off my arse and made a pilgrimage to the workshop.

Having made noises about a Trivet under the guise of Wild Woodworking School 2.0 by wildwoodbybrianjohns and hassled lazyman as he dared to make a comment, armed with measurements and the desire for neater crankles, I was determined to make another addition to my menagerie of puzzles (I consider it more a puzzle than whatever a trivet is used for).

Now that I have dispensed with the above bull********************, I can get down to the nitty-gritties of my plagiarism of the Trivet.

Starting with lazy's SketchUp model, I took a few liberties and jazzed it up for my laser cut MDF lamination technique.



sensible metric measurements,

and inane imperial for the wretches,

If you can't read it and are interested in the measurements, you can find it here in the PDF.
Rather than use normal dowels, I opted for pointy dowels. Not being able to purchase any from all our reputable timber suppliers, I decided to make some myself out of 9mm MDF. My laser beam struggles with the 9mm thickness, however, a centrefold of a naked sun spurred it into success.





Naturally the laser went into production,

I opted to try the puzzle as a single layered 6mm MDF assembly.
Each puzzle requires 6 of the same sized/shaped piece, where one piece is flipped and two are glued together making 3 separate items,





making 3 parts,


Back to the star of the show, which was ebony wood filler filled,

Just don't glue the buggers the wrong way…

bugger! Lucky I hadn't wasted filling it before discovering the oopsie. Good view of my pointy dowels in use.

After making the single layer, I found it a tad poopsie so decided to beef it up with a double lamination (King Oscar sardines… two layers),

Bottomed out with one of the alignment dowels so it couldn't be filler filled,

A quick trip to the drill press fixed it up.

Then it was a case of mass production after reducing the size from 6" to 60mm,

Even tried one without dowel alignment… with super glue it wasn't hard to wait till it dried without slippage,


If making a puzzle for someone or just getting them to solve, I recommend that it gets dis-assembled before handover as if the user disassembles it, they may get a good clue of how to assemble it,


The secret to assembling it is to get the 3 pieces,


align them,

till there is a neat triangle in the middle,

Then it should be a simple case of squeezing the 3 pieces together simultaneously.

Another contribution to the collection,


Just for the hell of it, I made a video, if only to prove my production skill have not improved.

If you don't have a laser or CNC, then it may not be worthwhile reading this blog…