Mounting puzzles cheap and easy without glue.

 I received a few questions recently on how I shrink wrap and mount my puzzles. I’ve done a lot of trial and error on this and want to share what I’ve learned, and what I’m currently doing in hopes that it may make things a little quicker/easier for others.

I prefer not to glue puzzles. There’s a naive part of me that actually thinks I may want to do some puzzle a second time down the road. Realistically...it’ll never happen, but it’s part of the goal here.

Goals:

• Temporary, IE...puzzle can be pulled back apart and part in the box later
• CHEAP...I do far too many puzzles to go out and get a 20$ frame for each one. Besides…I’m cheap.
• Look nice-ish? It’s not going to look like I had it framed at a store, but...I don’t want it looking like a kindergartner's Father’s Day gift either.

My starting point was from a great set of blog posts on Jigsawjunkies.com

• Part 1: https://jigsawjunkies.com/2015/01/14/how-to-temporary-mounting-for-puzzles-step-1-contact-paper/
• Part 2: https://jigsawjunkies.com/2015/01/15/how-to-temporary-mounting-for-puzzles-step-2-mount-on-foamcore/
• Part 3: https://jigsawjunkies.com/2015/01/21/how-to-temporary-mounting-for-puzzles-step-3-shrink-wrap/

I skipped the shrink wrapping altogether until recently. I’ll get back to shrink wrapping later.

This is a good system overall and it works fine for 500 piece puzzles and smaller. Going any higher than that though starts to present issues.

Issue:

The first issue was how to hang them on the wall. Considering the above goals (cheap) I decided to buy some very thin strips of wood which cost about $.80/ft at a local hardware store.

• Cut them to size and build a simple frame for the back side of the puzzle. 
• Staple the corners with a shop stapler, then glue the frame to the back side of the foam board with Elmer's glue.
• Let is sit for about 24 hrs, put some weight on it.
• Put some small wood screws into the frame and tie some twine to use to hang it from.

 Total cost on a thousand piece puzzle:

• Contact paper, foam board, Elmer's Glue, Wood strips, staples, screws, twine….Maybe about $5.

It works, and looks great for  up to 500 piece puzzles.   The are solid, light and cheap.

 1000 Piece puzzles were warping though. It’s hard to tell from the pictures I’ve taken (None shown), but there’s a definite and noticeable warp.

Foam Board:

There are two kinds of foam board at the local wal-mart.

• Cheaper (Ross), which are about $.80 apiece. 
• Higher quality brand that is more dense. Those are about $3 apiece, so your total cost will be closer to about $7.

I switched to the higher quality ones for the 1000 piece puzzles. It still warped, but…barely. It was good enough for me.

Two examples of 1000 piece puzzles:

With time, it became clear to me that the cause of the warping is the gluing of the contact paper to the foam board. I’ll come back to this later for the solution.

Solved:

Again, 1000 piece puzzles and lower...this is good from my perspective. Going above that, there are additional issues.

Issue:

Once the puzzle is larger than the standard foam board I started attaching two foam boards together and taping them with duct tape. The issue with that is there is flexibility at the seam that is visible and noticeable. It doesn’t look good.

Then I tried adding toothpicks in the seams and Elmer's glue. That helps quite a bit, there is still a slightly noticeable line at the seam,  but it is good enough I’d say up to about 2000 piece puzzles. Larger than that...it’s more noticeable than what I would like.

These are 1500, 2000 and a 3000 piece world map. Again, the seams are hard to see in the pictures, but...they’re more visible than I’d like. They’re ok to good, NOT great.

Pegboard:

A local Kmart shut down a few months ago and they were giving away the pegboards that they used in the store. I grabbed a LOT of them. Every flat surface that I see since I’ve started puzzling is now nothing more than “potential puzzle space/surface”. I figured the peg boards would be good to assemble larger puzzles on.

However, I decided to try it as backing for some of the larger puzzles in place of the foam board. I tried with a few. This time gluing the contact paper directly to the peg board, which I had already cut to size. It works, and looks fantastic. Solid, square...no flexibility or seams.

The first is a 1000 piece puzzle and the second is a 3000 piece Ravensburger. Both look fantastic.

HOWEVER…the pegboard is VERY dense and heavy. In order to hang it on the wall, you'll need to use some solid mounts directly into the studs.  Doing a 5000 piece like this...you may as well use plywood and mount it correctly.  It'll cost but it will look good.

In addition, the pegboard that I have isn’t large enough to go any higher than the 3000 piece puzzles, so we’re back to dealing with the seam issues.

Simply getting some light plywood is probably a great solution for 2000 and larger puzzles, but again….I’m cheap. I do a ton of puzzles, like a LOT. This stuff ain’t art to me. So my gut says there’s a solution still within the cheap foam-board.

Shrink-wrapping (The real solution):

Once I started shrink-wrapping, it dawned on me...I don’t need to glue the contact paper to the foam board anymore (bye-bye warping).

It also dawned on me...I don’t need the dang contact paper any more either. All I need to do, is assemble the puzzle on the foam board, or transfer it after assembled, and shrink wrap it. The shrink wrap will keep everything in place….and it does.

This is by far the best looking, most effective (and still cheap) solution so far. The four in the picture above are like that. 1000, 1000, 1500 and 2000.  The cost per puzzle is probably around $5.

I still have the flexibility issue on the two that are over a thousand pieces, but on the next one, I will add a second layer of foam-board. under the first with different seams. That should resolve those issues.

As far as shrink wrapping.

I use this brand (I tried a few). https://www.amazon.com/Duck-5-Window-Insulator-210-Inch-286217/dp/B000NHY1P0

It comes with double sided tape. You simply lay your tape along the back side, get the shrink wrap around it and use a hair dryer to seal it up nice and neat.
 The process is very similar to the initial article with some small differences. You do NOT need to buy a heat gun, a normal, household hairdryer works just fine for me.

It looks fantastic...it’s CHEAP...and I hope this helps.