Christmas

December 30, 2009 · Posted in Family, Friends, Photography, Project, Woodwork 

Besides the AWESOME gifts I got this year, I had a great time making a few gifts.  Two of them were wooden logic puzzles.  The first one, a ‘Soma Cube’, was discovered by Piet Hein in the mid 1930’s.  There are exactly 240 unique arrangements of the seven pieces to form a cube.  I made this puzzle out of aromatic cedar.


The second puzzle is the ‘Half-hour Puzzle’, created by puzzle-master Stewart Coffin.  This puzzle is slightly harder than the Soma Cube with only 1 solution for the 6 pieces.  I made this puzzle out of cocobolo.


I got the plans and instructions on how to make these from this book that Laurie gave me a few years ago for Christmas.

These turned out well, and I learned a few tricks to speed up the process.  The best part is that the recipient of the first puzzle wasn’t able to put it down all day.

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Comments

2 Responses to “Christmas”

  1. Laurie on December 31st, 2009 12:44 am

    I’m glad you thought your gifts were awesome, since it was a pretty skimpy year.

    And these puzzles are really cool. Oh, and you forgot to mention the pasta! 🙂

  2. Brian on December 31st, 2009 12:26 pm

    are you kidding? an apron and a frying pan were the best gifts I could have gotten.

    I didn’t mention the hat either.

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