Sawing systems
In the beginning sawing was done with a 'reductional' system. This implied that the pieces were sawn of from the plank piece by piece, from the outside to the middle. This can clearly be seen in the result. Take a look at the 'Bijenkorf' puzzle (right or bigger in Assortment), the first piece was at the right bottom. From there the edge of the puzzle was followed to the top, then along the top to the left, along the side to the bottom and then back to the right. After that the new outer edges were followed till there was nothing left to saw. Every sawn piece was put in the box immediately. These oldest puzzles were made without interlocking pieces, there were no tongues. At laying the puzzle the pieces just had to be put against each other.

Not much later the pieces were sawn with tongues gripping the adjacent pieces. The K-puzzle 'lantern', see the picture to the left, is an good example. With this puzzle they started at the top left. That can clearly be seen as this is the only piece that has, apart from the outer sides, a flowing line. With all others the cut starts more or less at an right angle from the previous cut. With this puzzle one continued along the side to the bottom, then to the right and so on, till only the piece in the middle was left.

The K-sawing system

The puzzles went with five into a multiplex frame with a thickness of those five puzzles and niches for the sawblades. The shown example is for 3x4=12 pieces.

Still later a unique sawing-style was developed. It made cohesion so good that it became possible to pick up a puzzle by two of the diagonally opposed edges and lift and put the puzzle in a box in one move. This method had two other advantages.
The first is that the puzzle remains 'laid' during sawing so the sawn pieces do not have to be put in the box. A clear advantage for the speed of sawing.
The second is that it became possible, because the puzzle remains 'laid', to put more puzzles on top of each other during sawing. With the hard birch triplex three puzzles together was chosen. Later softer poplar triplex became available making five puzzles together possible.

To prevent puzzles to shift during sawing a frame was made with the thickness of the number of puzzles to be sawn together. The frame showed holes where the sawyers could steer to. There were two small holes, de beginning and the ending of sawing. There was one big niche going around the corner to make the change from vertical to horizontal possible. The others always connected two cuts.
On a short and a long side of the frame a sketch was made to show what the cut should look like (not in this picture, would be a green cut on the left of the frame and a red one at the top). Almost all puzzles had at least one side with an odd number of pieces (the exception being de series 40 with four by four pieces). The cut along the odd side only had tongues on the od rows, the even rows just had a slightly curved line to the next row. The next tongue would then be made to the other side. This scheme can reasonably well be seen in the puzzle of the Golden Arrow train (fifth row below the Tangram game on the Assortment page).

Sawing in the K-system had to be practiced. This was called "firewood sawing": using old wood of insufficient quality. Form, place and shape of the tongues is manually done by the sawyer using the markings made on the edge of the frame mentioned above.

For bigger puzzles in book-boxes that had to be sold in a so called book box (see page Assortment, just above the 'Bijenkorf' puzzle) in the time of reductional sawing the pieces went by a slide to a box with a gauze bottom through which the sawdust fell. Then after sawing the pieces went into the box. After introduction of the K-system the puzzles were sawn into two halves or four quarters that were sawn like the smaller puzzles.

Many of the sawyers worked in their own homes (usually in a shed), with a company provided sawing machine delivered by our father, who also took care of picking up the puzzles from their homes and deliver new ones to be sawn.

Logo's

The workshop at the Klaus home in 1940

The triangular K-puzzle company-logo was designed by our father. This logo was used until the 1960's. Then, gradualy, the Kolibri emblem appeared and took the place of the K-puzzle brand. The Kolibri-logo was also designed by him.

Klaus in wartime
In the first years of the war the company managed to make a reasonable production. The excellent Finnish wood was no longer available, but a lesser quality was acceptable. In the end, however, puzzles were made out of thick cartboard and cheap wooden crates. Finally, they fell back on hardboard, at that time a novelty product (invented around 1935) and used mostly for blocking out light in windows in the black-out period. The advantage was that it didn't warp, sawblades however broke more frequently because of the glue used creating the board. These puzzles were advertised as 'ideal puzzle' because they didn't warp.
Pictures were also hard to come by. At a certain point they even had to use wallpaper for children's rooms. Wallpaper was also used on the boxes for the puzzles. In the winter of 1944-45 production became almost non-existent. Permissions for production of toys were no longer given by the German occupant. After the death of my grandfather (January 5th, 1944), also due to the effects of the hunger winter, less and less production was possible. Frans and Jan took every job they could. Jan, especially, was busy with his "hunger trips", trying to lay his hands on every bit of food he could find. Frans was busy with painting tiles, making luxury cassettes for silverware, making sigarette paper from carbon copy paper et cetera. At the end of this winter, Frans was picked up by the Germans (at the hairdresser's) and sent to Germany for the "Arbeidseinsatz", as were most of his employees.
In the war, Jan joined the B.S. (Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten, i.e. the resistance), which meant that, after the liberation, he was automatically in active military service. After the two years of his service, his place had been taken by Bep Voskuilen (brother in law). A further relocation was necessary because of the fact that Frans' family grew. A major part homestead was already taken by the factory. To go for dinner, you had to pass from the kitchen either through the cartonage or the sawing room. No fun for a young and rapidly growing family. The final location was found in the same street, on Beerensteinerlaan 43a.