Dave Evans, Jigsaw Shop Weymouth

Dave Evans trained and cut jigsaws at Victory’s Palmeston Road Factory, Bournemouth in his youth. Later in life, c 1995, he returned to craft industry, opening the Jigsaw Shop in the Old Brewery Building at Weymouth. He was a speedy cutter, with equipment capable of producing very large jigsaws. He gained the Guiness World Record for largest hand-cut jigsaw in a 47,763pc charity jigsaw for Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee celebration. The assembled jigsaw had to be re-assembled when it fell apart during preparations for its public display. In 2016 the Old Brewery was redeveloped, and his new workshop in Wimbourne Market closed in 2021.

Dave’s cutting style was interlocking, always with line-cutting. Nicki Barker describes it as, “each colour section was separately cut out and then individually cut in a linear or circular flow to suit whatever the colour section represented. The result is a puzzle that has a flowing cut going in all directions. His signature dolphin was located in water if at all possible…”. His plywood was 5-7mm thick and pieces are relatively large. Commercial giftboxes, often holographic ones, were used as packaging.
He believed that a well-cut jigsaw should have uniform-sized pieces, not ones varying much in size.