By KATHERINE PETERSEN
Dogs, fish, frogs, dinosaurs and Sunnyvale landmarks. These are just a few of the more than 40 wooden puzzles that Dave and Sue Yacopetti carve, paint and sell.
Dave, who retired as fire chief at Moffett Federal Airfield at the end of December, began making small toys and doll furniture in 1989 as a means to relieve stress.
"There's more to life than red lights and sirens. I'd always been interested in woodworking, so I began making little projects. Then the neighbors wanted one of these and one of those," he said.
The idea of wooden puzzles came to him when Sue, his wife, started a day-care center at their Milpitas home. The kids enjoyed the puzzles so much that the couple toyed with the idea of taking their business on the road to craft shows. They attended their first one in 1992 in Morgan Hill.
"We were making doll furniture, cars and trucks, and a few puzzles. But a lot of people were selling doll furniture, and very few were selling puzzles," Dave said.
In 1993, he and Sue decided to focus on making preschool puzzles, he said.
For the Yacopettis, making puzzles is a four-step process: First, they cut down sheets of birch plywood. They then trace the puzzle design onto the wood, cut out the pieces, paint them in a gazebo in their back yard and package the finished product in plastic. Bookshelves of puzzles line the walls of their storage room.
Sue and Dave work on the puzzles together. "The only thing she doesn't do is cut them down to size," Dave said.
The pair attended 26 craft shows in 1995 and will add five or six more to their schedule this year. They sell puzzles at shows in the Bay Area, Nevada and Arizona and to organizations that support disabled children.
"We make some puzzles with larger handles and larger pieces," Dave said.
Some of their puzzles are flat; others, such as the fruit puzzle with apple, banana, grapes and other edibles, have pegs on the pieces that make them easy to use.
Sue, who does most of the design work, said some of her ideas come from magazine pictures and then she finalizes the details. "I take the picture and then make it what I want the puzzle to be. For the whale puzzle, I wanted one with a big head and a little tail," she said. Other designs come from books.
One puzzle idea came from Tom Bakey, who runs CADartists in Sunnyvale and Cupertino. Bakey teaches disabled children and young adults how to create art on computers. His class drew pictures of several Sunnyvale landmarks, which he incorporated into a collage.
Bakey said he first saw the Yacopettis' puzzles at a Cupertino art show. "The puzzles looked great. I asked him if he could make a puzzle of our Sunnyvale art," he said.
The Yacopettis sell puzzles to CADartists at cost, and the group sells them to raise funds. Bakey said they have begun a project to create Silicon Valley art, which may become a puzzle as well.
The Yacopettis charge $8.95 for small puzzles. Dave said they wanted to make quality puzzles and keep prices down so a family with two kids could buy a couple puzzles and "not have to float a mortgage on their house."
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, January 17, 1996
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.