Brass Monkey Three

A couple of weeks ago Big-Steve and Ali (aka Two Brass Monkeys) thrust something into my hand and refused to take any folding stuff in return, so I guess that would make this a sponsored posting – so you probably shouldn’t trust anything I say from here onwards!

Get one – you will like it!

In case you’ve been napping for about a year, Big-Steve and Ali decided they were going to produce a series of about 6 or so brass burrs that all sort of looked alike… but would be pretty different beasts. The sort of thing you could line up on a shelf and have muggles ask you why on earth you had 6 copies of the self-same thing in your collection (assuming that isn’t actually your thing!). Of course, when you start playing with them, it would become apparent rather darn rapidly that they’re anything but identical…

We’ve already seen One and Two, this is Three, and true to their word, it looks just like the others. (OK, that’s not quite true! If you look closely at the ends of the pieces, the number of markings identifies the variant – this one has a central dot and two rings – so it’s number three. Simples!)

Get one – you will like it!

Now you’ll recall the first one was the standard burr with a key piece – find it and the thing pretty much disassembles itself… number two was trickier… and number three continues that pattern – it’s even trickier! 

I spent quite a while turning the big lump of brass around in my hands, pushing and prodding various things in various directions – tugging a bit harder – heck I even tried spinning the sucker at one point. (No, I drew the line at blowing on it.) 

I managed to find something interesting on my travels around brass-lump-land, but couldn’t work out how to use it properly – and that ended up taking me quite a while – and even once I’d more or less decided what I wanted to do, it still took me a while to actually do it. This thing demands accuracy on a par with the superb machining. 

Oh, and don't ever expect a standard, boring notching pattern from the boys - there's always a gentle little sting in the tail from them.

There’s an obvious additional challenge for the truly brave/stupid out there – and I’m sure that several people with dive on in – I didn’t, because I’m a wimp – feel free to tell me you did in the comments section… and what havoc you wreaked in the process!

The boys are really turning this into a smashing little set of puzzles – can’t wait to see what they do next. They’ve proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that they can do pretty much anything they want with these lumps of brass already… who knows where this will end up!

Get one – you will like it!