One of my relatives makes a large number of gingerbread houses for all the kids (and me!) to decorate for the holidays. They have been cutting the house panels out of rolled gingerbread dough using a knife and paper templates. I volunteered to make them some custom cookie cutters, as the three panels (2x roof, 2x wall, 2x end pieces) are geometrically very simple (two rectangles, and a triangle sitting on top of a rectangle.)

I bought some 1/2″ angle aluminum at the the big box (I would have preferred 3/4″…but they didn’t stock it…), along with some aluminum “welding rod” which is really a low melting temperature aluminum alloy solder. After doing some math, I marked the cutouts for the corners, cut them out with a band saw, and bent and soldered them into rectangles.

The rectangles were easy, with 90 degree cutouts on all four corners. The end pieces required a bit of geometry, but I eventually determined that the angles were 90, 30, 120, 30, and 90. Using a 3x4x5 triangle gave me all of the angles I needed (doubling up the 60 to get 120….)

By the last joint I was getting relatively good at soldering aluminum.

I also bought some aluminum wire for my MIG welder, and at some point I’m going to test out actually welding aluminum instead of soldering it. (Assuming I can get my knockoff MIG welder to feed aluminum wire without a spoolgun…something the Internet tells me is almost impossible to do without getting a rats nest of aluminum wire…….) But hey, I have a lot of spare pieces to practice on after making many miscalculations, mis-cuts, and a few complete meltdowns. (Practice makes it work well enough….)

If you are following along at home and want to make your own, the wall pieces are 3×5 inches, the roof pieces are 3″x6.5″ (This gives overhanging eaves, use 6″ for no overhangs), and all five sides of the end piece are 3″ long.