When Louis spent the weekend at
my place for MPP6 and the Puzzle Braai, he gave me a pair of
puzzles he’d made himself. I was aware that he’d started making some puzzle of
his own recently, and had begun spending his puzzle budget on puzzle-creation
devices (aka power tools) rather than on buying puzzles themselves. And I know
he’s taking this resolution seriously because in the run-up to MPP6 not a
single package arrived on my doorstep addressed to Louis!
The Burr
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwHHvQjcaBotTraHJxwa_nsZGN8rYEfRkjlXdgr4EQv93HXQ754-2wBowKfml01sNQ64XhV1aHMiB1FLAyG71QZA_7oWmzB4OVhioTwef9iGRwraIExLh_SsVms3K83efEKzbcsVSs0uBJ/s320/DSC_7275_edited-1.jpg)
- One of the pieces has a couple of blind corners on it, and
- The pieces are lop-sided, so the legs are going to be different lengths.
Now one of those would have made
it rather difficult to manufacture, and the other will make it rather hard to
solve … I had a little bit of a fiddle around with it on the Friday evening and
decided that the only way it was going together was with the help of BurrTools – but I wouldn’t resort to that yet, and certainly not in front of the man
who’d made it and just given it to me – that could be seen as rude.
I took it along to MPP6 the next
day and at one point Chris picked it up and asked about it, so I told him all I
knew – it was a short interchange. Louis pricked up his ears and a little while
after Chris had started fiddling around with it, he asked which burr it was and
Louis answered that he was sure he’d recognise it – Chris protested a little
and then Louis announced that he knew that Chris had one … which was just the
clue he needed and it was assembled pretty quickly after that.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg91hJpP6-oUrPTj9CnEwkSoh0vDknvx2w1_qg5QalNv6BUEpXfUHdBaV0UFdHY-4vN_odHR74isyB7piOfnIeNDiWRNEXUFlC95akigucSoMmdR6co-15q31KHwI8krnDHqtQ1MzLqemFm/s200/DSC_7274_edited-1.jpg)
…so for his first ever attempt
at making a burr, Louis has fabricated an oak Piston burr with offset arms… the
latter a result of having made the sticks a bit too long to actually assemble
them (one of the moves requires a piece to go around an end) so he added a
feature in the form of a short arm and a long arm on each piece, giving the
resultant burr a jaunty offset – and confusing and intimidating unwary puzzlers,
like this one.
The Box
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfsuBmtmX4qoIhQ_KLu9foqubnEdPT5FPJZ36yUWtePuzXQ9qRr_2WT749G98dLtKmCjnZIYuz6AA6NWpJ6yQahbi_a7aONkPlAix51bWxE5r2YDG-yMSd1QuV2zS8COogAaEqus7F_fAj/s200/DSC_7384_edited-1.jpg)
This time Louis arrived with his
A-MAZING Box #3. The name is a play on one of his forum handles and the
mechanism inside, and came courtesy of Wil, who named it after receiving #2 from
Louis. On the outside it looks like a fairly nondescript box – on the inside,
there lies evil.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCkZuEoHNhBOtcHPzwCTDAvaMwOr7yHEcFzZnYb1hp18YMEJMyOSOgqMPZ_NfADcvGKPXOGzWyiVbhK2CkgqZ7PHauEeOiiT8NtMEKaJZaEffTfIWLQAQ1USc_7zBtyj1uunj7ojpl5Ei2/s320/DSC_7386_edited-1.jpg)
The following weekend I sat down
and had a serious bash at opening it, and it must have taken me about an hour –
and I think it’s excellent! It gives a little feedback, and even having seen
its predecessors, I’d totally over complicated things in my mind. While I was
working on it I noticed that the bottom panel would move from time to time, so
I developed a fixation on that for a while … and yes, I even tried spinning it
and blowing into it – but I did not attempt to drown it! There are limits…
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimV8VHNsRp25WEALZ0Yy4fZXCqMh6ISBsNQ0sMKRzJ0SWKz5_I0C7IYjON7CPCMRN0d0zl864qOZwiKY_jRcJL9QN8PRUKOFnM3_DCDavywcTgp6HNFJI_3ws1H78h9kbra4xErBl3Zkxy/s320/DSC_7389_edited-1.jpg)
Louis has definitely put his new
power tools to very good use and come up with a great little puzzle box.
Thanks Louis – there’s a special
spot on my puzzle box shelf for this one now.
Thanks Allard for the overwhelming compliments, I am flattered and glad you like (and solved) these puzzles.
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job on the pictures, cunningly hiding the box opening mechanism. I never saw those burr pieces in so much detail before.
Yes I intend to take this new hobby seriously and yes I still need more powertools (and more practice) to materialise more of my puzzling thoughts in wood.