Long-eared Owl (Art Puzzle) (You Are What You Eat) – laminated

Title: “Long-eared Owl (Art Puzzle) (You Are What You Eat)” – laminated
Artist: Michael Autumn
Life-sized part-handmade, part laser-cut & engraved, two-sided, laminated plywood art puzzle (Limited Edition of 11)

Long-eared Owl – Laminated

This is a partly hand-cut and finished, partly laser-cut & engraved, two-sided, laminated plywood version of my original solid oak, hand-cut & engraved version of “Long-eared Owl (Art Puzzle) (You Are What You Eat)” (see https://michaelautumn.wordpress.com/2023/05/03/long-eared-owl-art-puzzle-you-are-what-you-eat/).

This is the culmination of three years of trying to find an engineering solution to making the incredibly intricate thick oak art puzzles I used to very laboriously (and painstakingly!) cut by hand using an electronic scroll (fret) saw. I tried waterjet cutting (that blasts away intricate areas and requires continuous cuts – totally wrong!). I bought and tried CNC routing (for about six months) with the smallest router bits available – but the bits that had the required diameter (1/32″) kept breaking and couldn’t reliably cut the depth required. And it require cutting at such small depths at each pass that even if the router bits didn’t keep breaking (and the whole job having to be restarted!) then it would have taken literally weeks to complete a single design!

The problem with conventional laser cutting (which I spent the best part of a year trying – with three different bought lasers) is that the deeper the material is, the more power is required – and therefore the wider the laser beam is. This results in an unacceptably wide kerf – gap between cuts. The kerf (gap) I managed by scroll-sawing – was about 0.7mm – which is the minimum I can accept. A laser that can cut through 42mm of plywood would ordinarily have a kerf of well over 1mm. So that is out of the question.

I pondered this dilemma for months, and tried various ideas – none of which worked. Eventually I can up with the idea of not trying to cut such thick material all at once – but to cut it much more finely in several thin layers – and then bond them together. This has (had) a number of issues and challenges in and of itself, however, I’m extremely please and relieved that I worked out solutions to the problems. And when I first produced the first fully acceptable complete version I was on cloud nine for several days…!

Suffice to say that the part hand-, part laser-, cut laminated version of my Long-eared Owl (Art Puzzle), is far more accurate, better fitting, and more reproducible – without causing RSI/hand arthritis! Having said all that, it takes about the same amount of time in total as hand-cutting(!) – about a week for each edition – because of all the part-laser cutting of multiple layers, doing the rear design – and quite a lot hand-finishing. But at least if is much less of a strain on my hands – and infinitely less daunting…!

“Art Puzzle” series

At the risk of stating the obvious, this work is part of my Art Puzzle series. For readers interested, further details can be found at the originating work’s post @ https://michaelautumn.wordpress.com/2020/03/01/guillemot-with-egg-art-puzzle/

Finished photos & videos