...you build her a keepsake puzzle box!
Well, at least that's what crossed my mind when I thought about a gift for my niece's upcoming birthday :)
My immediate family and I really love escape rooms, puzzles, and all other types or brain teasers, so it was pretty obvious to me that I needed to share this love with my niece. I knew I wanted to make her a keepsake box where she could house all of her prized possessions, and I had a bunch of ideas in my mind about how to incorporate a puzzle into it, so I jumped right into xDesign to figure out the puzzle locking mechanism.
As you can see, I didn't fuss with completing the CAD model, but rather only modeled it enough to give me the dimensions I needed to hand make certain pieces, and digitally fabricate (laser or CNC) other pieces.
The front of the box, as well as the knobs, first spent some time on the CNC as they had some specific geometry that needed to be just right.
Once completed, I could proceed with the traditional table saw work to cut the miters and the grooves that hold the top and bottom of the box.
During the glue-up, I used a simple tape method to clamp the pieces together. It's really quite effective. You just have to make sure to stretch the tape a bit while you are applying it to the boards so you create a bit of tension in the tape.
I applied 3 coats of water-based poly-acrylic, and got a little creative with some clamps and screw drivers to hold the knobs while they dried! :)
Meanwhile, my wife (a laser cutting queen) cut the intricate pieces of the lock out of 1/4" and 1/8" clear Acrylic using the Trotec laser in the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab on the Dassault Systemes Boston campus. She also designed and cut the Acrylic top which really makes the gift pop!
The design is really quite straightforward. It's a combination lock that can be opened when slots on the knobs line up with pins on the clasp. The fun part of this is how I conveyed the combination to my niece.
The Happy Birthday message that I wrote inside her card had the phrase "I Love You" written 7 times across a few paragraphs - each time in either purple or blue. When she unwrapped the present, she saw a pink tag on the box that she had to pull to receive a clue.
The clue looked like this... A front view of the puzzle box with each knob a different color, along with the phrase "I Love You" in large font.
My niece needed to figure out that she had to count the number of red, purple, and blue "I Love You's" in her gift and enter that number into the appropriate knob! She also had to figure out that the purple and blue answers could be found in the card, whereas the red answer could be found on the bottom of the box!
With just a tiny bit of guidance, she figured it out!!! Now it's time to take her to her first escape room!!!
I also added one final layer of fun to the gift... I didn't want her to stress about ever forgetting the combination, so I showed her that she need only look at the bottom of the box, read "I Love You", and then count the number of letters in each word :) The combination for the box is 143 ...which you may know is the universal number for "I Love You".
