Puzzle Piece Serving Tray Project

Puzzle Piece Serving Tray Project

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.

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The individual serving trays fit together to form a rectangle for easy storage.
The individual serving trays fit together to form a rectangle for easy storage.

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.

Each piece has its own pattern.
Each piece has its own pattern.

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.

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