About us:

This site is owned and operated by Dave Evans from a small town called Twizel, which is situated in the central South Island of New Zealand.

Twizel is centrally positioned on an alpine plateau surrounded by some of New Zealand’s most beautiful scenery including New Zealand’s highest mountain Aoraki-Mount Cook with ice clad mountains, glacially fed lakes and rivers just a short drive in all directions.

Dave has been making Jigsaw puzzles since 1996 initially supplying the retail and corporate markets in New Zealand but in recent years has specialized in the personalized gift market satisfying customers from all over the world.

Before turning his hand to making jigsaw puzzles, Dave was a pilot, flying ski equipped aircraft which took tourists from all over the world around the Mount Cook and Westland National Parks, then landing them on one of the many glaciers in these national parks.

Two things happened in early 1995, which got the Jigsaw Puzzle Factory to where it is today. Firstly Dave was considering a career change and being a passionate photographer was thinking how he might use his stock of landscape photos and secondly, he came across a very large hydraulic press that was in perfect working order.

Having done many jigsaw puzzles over the years during the cold and short days that characterize a typical alpine New Zealand winter, it didn’t take long to make the connection between photos and the hydraulic press.

That was the easy part!! A year later after much research, many phone calls, faxes, gnashing of teeth and a rapidly dwindling bank account Dave had a 1000 piece cutting die (the knives) which were made and shipped from England, the engineers, and the press all lined up in the same place.

Four months of trial and error and several desperate phone calls to a very helpful die maker in England and the first 1000pc puzzle was successfully cut.

The trick is to cut the puzzle directly onto a hardened steel plate using 650 Tons of pressure per square inch without wrecking the cutting die and compensating for minor but significant warping of thick steel plates that occurs at 650 tons which can seriously affect the quality of cut across the whole puzzle.

What won’t be make public is a few tricks and pitfalls learned along the way to achieving a successful cut, but what can be said with confidence is that The Jigsaw Puzzle Factory guarantee’s our 1000 piece puzzles are among the best cut puzzles you will find.

Happy puzzling,

Dave