Bob Armstrong's Jigsaw Puzzle Restoration Process
My restoration of a wooden jigsaw puzzle begins with making replacements for the puzzle pieces missing or badly damaged. This involves delicate tracing of the outline, precision cutting with a scroll saw under a magnifier and careful reconstruction of the artwork with water colored pencils. But I do not stop there. I also reglue any broken pieces and knobs loose in the box. And then for missing knobs and paper I rebuild the knob with Plastic Wood and reglue the missing paper, touching them up at the end to fit into the surrounding area. My restoration of cardboard puzzles is more limited; I make replacement pieces for them only when feasible..
For boxes, I replace missing parts and rejoin split corners, working from the inside and using archival materials. I do not normally touch up my repair work on boxes or try to improve the appearance of the box, leaving it looking old but once more usable for storing the puzzle in pieces.
My restoration work is the proverbial "labor of love," taking far more time and patience than can ever be economicaly justified. For me it is the thrill of restoring an antique puzzle to a level where it can be assembled and enjoyed and "looks good" that really counts. I limit my work to the puzzles which I acquire; I do not do this work on other collector’s puzzles for a fee.
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GLORIA The most challenging restoration project I have ever undertaken |
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Gloria is a 300 piece Parker Brothers/Pastime puzzle cut in 1928 in a highly unusual and intricate style with 36 elaborate figure pieces. It found its way to me because it had suffered such serious damage over the years that the puzzle was worthless to anyone else. Specifically, 150 pieces required repairs, many with their 3 layers of ply warped and delaminated and picture separated, and then some of these broken further into fragments (see close up below for a particularly egregious example).
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It took nearly a month and 100 hours of labor to reassemble, glue, and file each damaged piece, and to refile them again just to fit into the puzzle because the intricate nature of the original cutting required tolerances of a thousandth of an inch (or less). While all the pieces technically were present, many had broken knobs and missing fragments and layers of ply which had to be replaced. Just working on the puzzle caused further damage. | |
| By the end, I had developed
a "love-hate relationship" with Gloria which only another craftsperson who has ever become fully engrossed in a seemingly overwhelming work will ever understand. Now, however, Gloria once more looks out demurely at the world with all her stunning beauty and will remain forever in the Armstrong Collection as a shining example of the proverbial "labor of love". |
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Also see Requiem for another example of a difficult restoration of mine, with "before-and-after" shots.