SUNBURY — As a boy growing up in Northumberland, Jim Smith remembers standing by his grandfather’s side for hours watching him cut puzzles.
“My grandfather started making hand-cut puzzles in 1929 to help him make it through the Depression,” Smith said. “He was so good he could hand make little people, animals all kinds of really intricate designs and I think that’s what really fascinated me the most — no two pieces are alike.”
After retiring from working 30 years in a machine shop, Smith himself took up the craft, first as a hobby, and now as a small business.
Most days Smith can be found in the basement of his Julia Street home, the gentle thudding on his saw an ever-present accompaniment to his work cutting hundreds of little puzzle pieces.
He uses no stencil, no stamping machine to form the pieces. All of his work is done free-hand.
“I like to do the impossible ones,” Smith said with a smile, like the one he is currently working on that cuts a Where’s Waldo picture into hundreds of tiny pieces — a puzzle sure to cross the eyes of even the most ardent fan.
Before they are cut, Smith’s puzzles start out as a photo, sometimes a family photo, but most often a photo or illustration ripped from an old calendar that has been glued and pressed to a piece of hardwood plywood.
Then comes the task of forming the puzzle.
The scroll saw blades Smith uses come from Switzerland and are only ten-thousandths of an inch in width, Smith said, making the spaces between the individual puzzle pieces barely noticeable.
“The puzzle pieces are interlocking,” Smith said. “You can actually pick the puzzle up by its corners without it falling apart.”
Laying on a table in a room adjacent to his basement workshop is a display of the puzzles Smith takes with him to the crafts shows he sells at throughout the Valley.
From kittens and pandas to airplanes and motorcycles, Smith has a puzzle sure to please just about anyone — well, almost anyone.
Smith remembered one couple who asked if he had any puzzles of skunks. No, was Smith’s reply, and when he peered into he baby stroller the couple was pushing, he realized their affinity for the stinky creatures.
“What was in the baby carriage? A skunk,” Smith said. “So he wanted a puzzle made of his pet skunk in the baby carriage, so you never know. Whatever you have, they want something else.”
Smith has only one puzzle remaining that was made by his grandfather — a winter scene, its corners chewed by mice, made from a calendar dating to the 1920s.
Within the puzzle’s hundreds of pieces are cut a hatchet, a diamond and a fleur-de-lis.
Smith said he is now trying to phase out the amount of craft shows he attends due to the cost of traveling and renting tent space, and is instead relaying more on special-order puzzles.
To order a puzzle, call Smith at 988-0717.
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Cutting puzzle pieces is a labor of love
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