Portent

These are quite wonderful, puzzle boxes and remind me of puzzles in films. You have to solve the puzzle to open the box.

You can buy some, for example the snake box, which costs just under $700 has tessellations on the top. By moving pieces around, eventually you end up with a chessboard pattern and the box opens.

The designer Kagen Schaefer is into maths and woodworking and makes puzzle boxes for a living in Denver, Colorado.

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I’m not saying how sturdy these are but they look quite stylish, especially as you can print anything on them. It’s a video on how to fold paper (Origami) into CD cases. Useful for mailing in the post though I’d recommend a piece of card inside as well or use thick paper.

Not a lot of people know that I have a black belt in Origami. I made it myself…

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These reminded me of the Postsecret cards, not in appearance but in poignancy. There are 21 cards drawn by artist Ehdom. You can buy the complete set on Ebay. Possibly to send to anyone of the opposite sex who humiliated you or rejected your advances at school etc!

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This has been around for years (hah appropriate!) and lets you select a year then postscript or pdf output, in a variety of languages and regular or rhombic shaped output.

It then generates a calendar kite (shown is one for 2008) which you print, then cut and glue together. You can see what one looks like (if you know 12 sided dice in Dungeons and Dragons then you know what a regular dodecahedron looks like).

It also works for any year so you can use it as a quick way to check what day of the week a given date was on.

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In the past we’ve had stories about art made of crayons, (not with crayons!) but this one is about pencils. Not using them to draw but carvings of pencils.

The artists are Mizuta Tasogare and Kato Jado. They have to be skilled enough for delicate woodwork in carving out a pattern like some kind of a tracery without making any miscuts on the naked lead inside. This is amazingly intricate work.

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I bought a clock made from watch parts once, when I stayed in the Anjoa hotel in Leeds in 1991. The watch parts were arranged around the actual clock face i.e. decorative not functional. I think it cost me £35. The owner was selling them.

These 16 motorbike models are also made from watch parts. They are just exquisite.

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These are lovely looking and particularly well done, not to say intricate work especially at the bottom of the page. Although I have a black belt in origami (I made it myself -using black paper <groan>), when it comes to cutting, I am not the worlds greatest.

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I used to have to some of the Robert Harbin books on Origami and was quite a paper folder aged 12. I’ve got a black belt in Origami- made it myself! (Boom boom!).

But these days, those waterbombs and flapping birds would not cut the mustard. Instead of the typical 20 or so steps needed to produce the figures, very complex patterns, up to 100 steps are needed and the results speak for themselves. The origianl rules apply- one sheet of paper, no tears or cuts. The dragon picture above illutrates this. Clicking the picture takes you to an article on Discover.com

These days, as with much else, software is used to design the shapes. Treemaker is an open source application written by Robert Lang and this is what makes these amazing shapes possible. It takes design complexity way what past man alone can produce.

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From ages 9-14, my childhood was spent building Airfix kits. At one point I had 83 aircraft hanging from my ceiling, mostly 1/72nd WWII but also a few modern aircraft including the Hercules transporter. For a kid with asthma this was probably most unwise, as model aircraft are a dust magnet, but every three months my parents got out the step ladder out and dusted the whole lot. No wonder my wife says I was spoilt!

Sadly Airfix went into receivership yesterday with 31 out of 41 of Humbrol’s employees (the owner of the Airfix brand) laid off. I wonder if the present Govt. will send in people to destroy all plans of the TSR-2 aircraft kit (shown) that was new this year, just like a previous Labour administration did with the real aircraft plans in the early 1960s. (To prevent any chance of a future Conservative Govt resurrecting it)!

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This is a bit early for Halloween and I’m not the world’s best virtual carver of pumpkins(don’t think it’ll get me featured in the Museum of Bad Art though!) but it’s a fun toy.

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It will probably never win any awards for visual appearences but then with this type of site that isn’t quite so important.

My grandfather used to have a workshop full of mysterious tools- I could spend hours looking at them wondering what they were. Mind you I was only 8 years old. But I did manage to take apart a few clocks and put them back together with one or two bits left over. That was ok until I started on the working clocks.

If you are into old tools, this is a tremendous site. Lathes, planes, old companies, history, people and useful links. There is a lot here- at least 700+ pages according to google.

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