Froggy went a lasering.

Boys and Girls,

When the missus met me she thought if I kiss that frog he'll hopefully turn into a prince. Well she didn't kiss me and at 72, I'm still that rickety old amphibian croaker.

Searched the Internet for the family tree, bypassing some French relatives that were legless even without the vino, and chose to ignore a tad number of Poles… this son of a Hungarian fern cutter found pictures of his relatives Russian around in circles.


Tried to trace over the above picture in SketchUp, however, after a few hours abandoned the quest as my thirst got the better of me.

While surfing the WEB for other puzzles I could add to my miniature collection, I came across a DXF file published by a dave.vaness.79 on Instructables. I had thought of giving dave a few shekels as a donation, but when I found out it was an Escher design, I wrote a generous cheque out to the latter and am waiting for him to come and collect it.

When imported into CorelDraw, I created a full sized pattern,

however, reduced it to a miniature of 56mm x 60mm as I didn't think it worthy of a full scale production.

Made it my laser friendly and churned off 16 copies in miniature. For once I found that the charring of the laser gave it a great body texture and I decided not to sand the charring off the frogs, however, I did sand it off the rim/frame.

Now all I had to do was to connect these frogs

into 16 separate ponds…

with the 20¢ as an indicator of the puzzle size. Bagged them up,

ready for give aways.

On closer examination of the "puzzle" I came to realise it was not really a puzzle but an exercise of putting the right shape into the right slot and came to a conclusion it was more a presentation piece and would look good upscaled.
Churned some larger pieces out

and quickly realised I made some fundamental errors in the engraving, that weren't visible in the miniature ones, where some of the spines were misaligned and some eyes missing,

These were corrected and a new item emerged.


I also tried some adhesive backed felt in the laser and was surprised with the result.




Unfortunately it was a bit too thick (compared to flock) and it made the puzzle protrude over the surface of the rim… though this was not a totally unacceptable outcome,

when fully bedded down,


Looking at the result, the corners looked bare so I considered engraving a frog in each corner,


Then I had a,

and rather than sitton my rrrs, decided to get a


Why not extend the engraving over the "frame"… I expaned the base design and it made an impressive ollage of a froggy infestation,





Sorry for the crappy definitions of the screen dumps above.

Doctored the froggy infestation and redesigned for the frame engraving,




Then I went totally feral and turned into a thrillseeker, creating a circular pattern,




All the large items were buffed using the Beall Buffing system which is the one activity that I loathe nearly as much as reading or rechabitting.

The miniature ones, being a freebie, were left and baggied as is.

These have proven to be my most popular "puzzle", which goes to prove that it's not only the Frenchies that like frogs (and/or fries).

Anyone with a laser of CNC that may be interested, just OI me about what you require… other than my vino or my incarceration.

PS. Just a teaser for maybe another forthcoming post (bowl to the left),

bet pottzy's peeing his pants in anticipation.

Keep safe jocks... and your jocks safe!