I was really intrigued with Kim's work on the burr puzzles and wanted to give one a try in a slightly smaller size. This will be the same as his 12 piece one (all pieces the same) only done with 3/8" square stock rather than 5/8". Therefor the length of each piece will be 1 7/8". The other thing I wanted to do was mix different metals so I had ordered and received sufficient lengths of aluminum, copper, stainless steel, and brass.
To start, three pieces of each material were parted off slightly long (photo 1). Each was then faced to get down to the 1 7/8" required (photo 2). Since the materials varied somewhat as to their square size (though only by .001" or .002", I sanded them down by hand on the surface plate until the .375" dimension was consistent (photo 3). The last photo shows the 12 pieces, three from each material, ready for machining.
The machining has commenced and will have more on that later today.
Bill