Hello Jon, I agree with Eric, I have actually heard these types of discovery puzzles called "Treasure hunting Puzzle" or "Sequential Discovery Puzzles"  I like the idea that you give the solver a little bit of progress, and then stop them in there tracks and force them to think again before they can proceed.  This type of puzzle I find much more fun and rewarding once solved than a puzzle that takes a 100 moves to solve

Hi Jon, the puzzle box ideas sound fantastic!!! I hope you enjoy making the cubed Match Box.  It's a fun box to make.  Eric's site has some great pics of some of his past boxes in the archive section off of the sale page.  Congratulations Eric for your recent Cam box repro by Bits And Pieces, I played with the original when we had the library here, and I look forward to purchasing the Bits And Pieces copy, although I know it won't come even close to your original in terms of construction.

Jon also be sure and see Jim Strayer's excellent puzzle box gallery. There you will see a good selection of some of the finest puzzle boxes ever made.  You can see it here http://www.lhup.edu/jstrayer/gallery.htm

Also feel free to contact me via my personal email in my profile if you have any questions, and I will also contact you as the next puzzle party gets closer.

Please post a photo of your Match Box when you get it finished, I would love to see it.  Glad to see another person is becoming addicted to creating puzzle boxes 

Hello Jon, We are practically neighbours    I live in Stoney Creek, Ontario.  There has been a group of puzzlers that have been holding Canadian Puzzle Parties in Toronto, We just had our second puzzle party in November, and our next one is scheduled for sometime around March next year.  We have been holding them at Oliver and bonachini resteraunts in Toronto, but the group is growing and our next party may move locations.  It's a fun night out, and you get to see and play with all these cool puzzles and puzzle boxes.  If your interested I can keep you up to date on when the next party is scheduled.

Thanks for the kind words Brian!  I am also fairly new to puzzle making!  I have learned a ton of tips on this forum (Thanks Guys!) and have reccently purchased myself a table saw.  The 2in2 with frame is a great beginner puzzle,  The puzzle turned out nicer than I thought it would.  The beveling was very simple, I just used sand paper and took off all the sharp corners.  The puzzle also is simple to cut all cuts are 90 or 45 degrees.  I'm having a blast with the new saw, and I'm hooked on puzzle making now 

Well it's been a while since I posted here and thought it's time for an update.  With IPP not far off I have been busy making puzzles and testing out the new cross cut jig I built.  I revisited the Lacewood box and made some more of them.  The original box I cut on a compound miter saw, and I am very happy with the increased accuracy that the table saw and cross cut jig brought to them.  I also used Scott Peterson's suggestion of using the table saw blade at 45 degrees and dropped into the table to put the detail work on the boxes.  It was much more precise than my hack saw blade method  Thanks Scott!

I also have admired the "2 in 2 with Frame puzzle" designed by M. Uyematsu, and happened on the plans for it on Ishino's "Puzzles would be Played" website.  I made the puzzle out of walnut and maple.  They turned out better than I was expecting and the solution has a small trick to it which makes them fun to solve.

A quick word about Ishino's "Puzzles Would Be Played" website, this site is absolutely fantastic and a wealth of great designs.  If Ishino happens to read this; thank you very much for your work on putting this site together.  It's great to be able to make a copy of these wonderful puzzles for personal collections.  I also am not planning on selling the 2 in 2 with frame, because it is not my design, but I appreciate the chance to try out my wood working skills and make the design!

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Wow  Poison oak, Fantastic! It's too bad playing with the puzzle doesn't cause a rash, think of the extra challenge if it did  Great work Tom!

Hello Mark, I am glad the Matchbox puzzle inspired you    That particular puzzle is fairly forgiving when it comes to wood.  The pieces are small enough that I think you shouldn't have any troubles with the wood that you purchased.  If you do use a miter hand saw I would recommend using a stop block set on you miter bed to butt the piece your cutting up to.  Put the block in a position that will allow you to cut your largest piece in the puzzle (with 1/4" stock that would be at 2 3/4" from your blade) When your cutting your smaller pieces I recommend leaving your block in place and inserting spacers (pieces of scrap 1/4") to get to your shorter cuts.  The puzzle plans are all in multiples of "Thickness" so this spacer idea will work out nicely.  I also recommend clamping everything down as you cut.  This will help the accuracy of the cuts.

When your gluing the rails on the two side pieces on the box use your 1/4" stock to position them the correct distance from each other, this will also help throw any warp to the outside of the box which can be later sanded down.  All of the sanding on my Matchbox was done by hand, so you will have no problem with a sanding block.  I also attempted to camouflage which panels where moving panels by sawing lines into the box where they naturally occurred, and then where they didn't I created them to throw the puzzle solver off.  I again did this by hand using a small hack saw blade.

When I cut the pieces for my box I ended up using a power compound miter saw, but I also started out with hand tools, the only thing is that it's extremely difficult to get the needed accuracy that mechanical puzzles require using hand tools.  So I highly recommend using power tools for better accuracy.  I have recently purchase my first table saw, and can say that my accuracy has improve enormously.  It's the best purchase I have ever made.

I can't speak too much about dealing with warped wood.  I don't own a planer.  I try to purchase the straightest boards I can, but I am sure some of the others may have advice on dealing with tricky boards.

Here is a link to the plans for the Matchbox if you don't already have them.  Let us know how you make out, I would love to see the finished product. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bruce.viney/Modified%20Matchbox%20Plans.pdf

I failed one of my math courses. There's nothing like a wasted summer than sitting in summer school taking algebra. I'll go with Eric's answer 43 has to be it 

Wow cool! Didn't think that was possible 

I have seen the Revomaze being sold on Ebay by the inventor.  Here is a small video of a prototype model, I believe the inventor is the one operating it.  You can see the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CAkESOsdXA  Looks like a really solid puzzle.

Watts all this talk about electricity?!?

O.k. now that's what I call efficient.

All great information here.  Kevin one of my all time favorite coordinate motion puzzles is Vinco's "Flat trick" puzzle.  It always gets the biggest gasp from people when I show it to them, you can see it here http://www.vinco.kleinpeter.cz/index.php?pg=hlavolam&kategorie=37&hlavolam=356  It is not an extremely difficult puzzle, but it is a very impressive design idea, truly amazing to see opening!

It's a tie!  Honestly though that's a crazy amount for shipping! I guess this means we are going to see a lot of puzzles being made from balsa wood 

Hey that was my guess, See $880.00 US converted  to Canadian is $1100.00