Gerry is a retiree but hasn’t retired his creativity and love of making. He now uses his time to invent games and puzzles to sell at local markets in his PUZZLE’N TIME stall.
Gerry is a very experienced woodworker and normally does all his puzzles and games from his own workshop. We were able to use the laser cutter to help with a few aspects of his process to leave him more time to focus on the parts he loves. It was great to see that technology doesn’t have to take over but can be utilised to support traditional woodworking.
The first time he came to TAP Lab we learned that for his dice game he had an incredibly time-consuming process of writing letters on individual dice. Not only did he write them on by hand, he would also varnish, sand and re-varnish them to ensure the longevity of the letters on each set of 36 dice. A task that he admitted would take him several months to complete.
He came in for our Open Maker Sessions and our team members at TAP lab were able to create a more streamlined process. Inkscape was used to create a digital template, they were set up in a box to get the correct positioning and then the laser cutter engraved the dice. We got through over 800 dice this way. An added bonus of laser engraving is that Gerry did not need to varnish them as well, saving him considerable time and effort.
After the dice were done Gerry came in with a hand drawn plan for his crazy cats and crazy animals stacking games. When he has done them before he has had to trace the drawings onto each sheet of plywood, cut them out with a bandsaw then draw all of the faces, patterns and numbers onto them. He scanned the hand drawn version then we engraved it onto the wood. The wood he was using was too thick for laser cutting but with the outlines of each animal all engraved he could take them home to cut out with his band saw. Working with the tools is something Gerry clearly loves and we didn’t want to take that away from him. He was able to skip all of the drawing and focus on the woodworking.
If you’d like to get to know him and his wares, he runs the stall PUZZLE’N TIME with his wife at the Te Atatu Peninsula Artisan market.