Think of a fairly young man in a "gob suit"; white cotton pants, blue neckerchief, broad white collar with blue piping, and a round white cap cocked over one eye. He is walking down a street in Honolulu for the first (and last, to date) time in his life.
Beautiful girls with long, black hair are hawking pineapple for ten cents a slice. He is a second class petty officer, hence well-off enough to afford a slice or two. He has never seen a raw pineapple, so he stops one of the girls and asks for one.
He had no idea pineapple could taste so good, nor that such beautiful young girls existed. Reviewing his options, he settled for another slice of fruit.
Moving on, he almost did something else for the first time in his life. That is, pass a bookstore without going in for a look around. Before any great amount of his precious afternoon had passed, he emerged with a copy of 100 Puzzles and How to Make and Solve Them, by Anthony S. Filipiak, published that same year, 1942, by A. S. Barnes and Company.
Back on the destroyer Newcomb, the most interesting part of the book turned out to be a chapter called "Six Piece Burr Puzzle", which described thirty-seven pieces and listed seventy-three combinations that could be assembled into void free counterparts of the picture.
The only wood on the Newcomb was some jealously guarded damage control props, out of the question for use in making puzzles, intriguing as these combinations were.
Next best was to explore the subject with pencil and paper and spare time. Of course, since he was an electronics technician, the radar and sonar equipment came first. By some administrative fluke, he was an ad hoc fire-control man, having been sent off to some training sessions with the ships gunner's mates, and found himself consulted on their electronics problems. Not much time for puzzles.
After the Newcomb, more training on new radars, and assignment to the construction of the cruiser Macon, commissioned on the day after WWII ended. Civilians can own and operate table saws, which takes us to the sawdust and wood-chip story.