If you try to hold a plate and a wine glass at the same time, you have to set one down to feed yourself — unless you have one of these fun Party Puzzle Tray pieces! Each puzzle piece gives you room for snacks, plus a notched cutout for holding a fluted wine glass. Our design has the pieces fitting together into a nice rectangle that can sit on a sideboard or table until needed.
These fun little party trays have been showing up in catalogs for a while now. Our design has the pieces fitting together into a nice rectangle that can sit on a sideboard or table until needed.
If you will be using a CNC to cut out the pieces, then you will need the .tap files for each piece – download all six .tap files here. If you do not have access to a CNC router, then you can also cut these pieces out with a jigsaw or scroll saw. We have created six full-sized drawings of the pieces – download the party tray patters as a PDF file. Simply glue them to your stock and use a saw to cut out each piece.
We used Baltic birch plywood for our puzzle pieces, but you could mix and match different wood species to come up with a cool look. Just remember, if you are using solid wood, you may have to adjust how tightly the parts fit together — if the pieces swell with seasonal humidity changes, it might make the pieces too tight.
Finish should be something that is easily cleaned up and resists alcohol. I used a very thin amber shellac wash coat, followed by white spray lacquer. Then I waxed the pieces to make them feel great and to keep the lacquer from welding together.
Applying the laser etching featured in the January/February 2016 issue of the magazine is simple. Just upload this file to your laser etching device, put the puzzle tray in place and let the decoration begin.
