Gluing and framing a 9000-piece jigsaw
In November 2023 I started Ravensburger’s 9000-piece Dragon Forest puzzle, and I finished it in early January 2024. To my best estimate, it took me about 240 hours to complete.1
From the beginning, I was planning to glue & frame this puzzle when (if!) I completed it. I know some people will think it’s anathema to apply glue to a jigsaw puzzle, but I always intended this to be wall art.2 What I was not expecting was that the process of gluing & framing this puzzle would be WAY more difficult than doing the puzzle was.
I did not frame this puzzle myself, rather I brought it to a specialty frame store to have them frame it for me. But preparing your puzzle to be framed is already a gigantic undertaking, so hopefully this will help you.
Probably most people just want to see the completed puzzle and don’t care about the rest of the article, so here’s a picture:
Once I finished my puzzle, I turned to the internet to learn how to frame it. Sadly, while I found guides about how to seal a puzzle and how to store a 24,000 piece puzzle, I did not find much about sealing & hanging a 9000-piece puzzle. My friend Chloe found a post about mounting an 8000-piece puzzle to the ceiling, but while it’s definitely made me want to complete a gigantic puzzle of the Sistine Chapel and mount it to my own ceiling,3 it doesn’t describe sealing4 the puzzle, and I’m not looking to mount a gigantic wooden slab from my wall.
So, I asked the internet. I ended up with two possibilities:
I explored both options and ultimately decided on option 2, but I think option 1 could work if you’re more DIY than I am. Word of warning: No contractor will help you with this project. You’ll say the words “jigsaw puzzle” and they’ll say “nope, absolutely not, I’m not taking on that liability.”
Regardless of which method you choose, the first thing you’ll need to do is attach all of the pieces to each other so that you are dealing with a single sheet of “completed puzzle” instead of 9000 individual pieces.
Source: HackerNews (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45709499)
