Puzzle Box

Dave R

Here is a quickie doodle of a little puzzle box I did the other day.

And here's the proof of concept box I made yesterday.

I scaled it up slightly and deiced to omit the coin slot. It'll hold a gift card placed in diagonally. There are four more of them in the shop waiting for the finish to dry.

They're kind of fun little boxes. All of the parts are identical except the last part to go in which gets a bit of a relief carved in the edges so it'll fit into the receiving slots at an angle. The relief winds up being invisible once the lid is inserted and it takes quite a lot of pressure to drive the lid in. Getting the lid out of this one will be a real challenge.

I made a modification to the lids for the other four so they'll be easier to remove.

pilou

A little headache!

Dave R

For my neices and nephew? Of course.

Mike Lucey

Good, old fashioned, eco friendly toys

Dave R

Mike, I think those are the best kind.

Here are the finished boxes. One of them is disassembled on the left.

cotty

Nice Render with a decent DOF

Dave R

Thanks Carsten. I think the DOF and the dust on the table make it harder to tell this isn't a photo.

davidheim1

Dave,
If you want to get really, really, really serious about puzzle boxes, go to:

kagenschaefer.com

Kagen is my cousin's son. He's been making puzzle boxes since he was in college, and he's won some big awards for his work. Some of his boxes require 100 moves to open.

dh

Dave R

Hi David,

Thanks for the link. I'll check out his site.

I've thought about making other puzzles but these boxes were mainly done to pick up the slack for my brother. He has for the past several Christmases "wrapped" gifts for our niece that are a challenge to unwrap. Last year's box required a screw driver to open. The lid was inset flush with the sides. He put in about two dozen screws around the edges of the lid and two in the middle. The ones around the edges were decoys and had nothing to do with holding the lid on the box. To open it she had to remove one of the screws near the middle and then reach down in the hole with a smaller screw driver and turn another screw to the left to jack the lid up off the magnets that were holding it closed. Of course she removed all the screws around the edges first.

The year before he made a plywood box in which he put the gift and surround it with that expanding spray foam.

Steve's kind of mean that way but it's all in fun and Katie loves to get gifts from him.

This year they won't be as much of a challenge.