In the beginning of June this year, I recieved an Email from fellow puzzle maker Lee Krasnow. The email was regarding a set of cubes a gentleman named Bill Darrow wanted Lee to make for the upcoming IPP. Lee was not able to do the job because he was in the middle of re-locating his workshop. After corresponding with Bill, I took the job, slightly nervous about the short time frame.

Bill wanted me to make him 38 cubes based on the "Twelve Dissections of the Spiral Group". They would have to be made with a high degree of precision for two reasons. First, the set is highly interlocking; that is, you can use the pieces from two different cubes to make a third puzzle, and so on. Second, Bill had some Spiral Group cubes that had been previously made by Interlocking Puzzles, and he wanted the new ones I made to be compatable with those.

I went to my local wood store to try and match up the woods used by IP. Bill said they had used Chechen and Guatam, neither of which were available to me locally. After perusing a bunch of choices, I went with Prima Vera and Grandillo, both South American hardwoods that glue nicely. To the right is a picture of the rough wood beside the sample puzzle (built by IP) that Bill sent me.

The first step in the process was planing the wood. After the wood was run through the planer a few times, it sure looked a lot better!

The next step was to rip the stock into oversized sticks. The Grandillo went through beautifully, but the Prima Vera twisted up quite a bit. This led to difficulties planing the sticks to square, and a much higher waste factor then the Grandillo later on in the process.

After the sticks were ripped, a good try square was used to identify a solid 90 degree angle on each stick. If a stick came out with no 90 degree angle available, a few runs over a jointer fixed it right up. After the 90's are established, you run the sticks through a thickness planer. Besides altering the thickness of the sticks, the planer also has the entirely useful property of making two surfaces parallel. It does not take much of an imagination to see what happens...the true 90 degree angle is fed in first, and the resulting parallel enforces the angle on all four corners of the stick. That is, unless of course you have a lot of twist and warp, as I did on the Prima Vera. In that case, the stick may come through squared for most of it's length, but off a bit on small sections. Figuring out the parts that were off was a real trial!

After the sticks were squared up, they were cross cut into blocks measuring 1x1x2. I made .750" stock for these puzzles, and crosscut the blocks to 1.508" to allow a bit of room for expansion and fit. The fact that these puzzles can be made entirely of 1x2 blocks makes them a lot easier to make then cubes with single cubes. I don't know if I would have had the time to complete the project had that been the case!

Finally time to start to glue...and glue...and glue. I thought I would never be done. 38 cubes with 8 pieces per cube with 3 glue joints per piece makes 912 glue joints. May not seem like a lot, but trust me, it's VERY time consuming. Based on an excellent suggestion Lee Krasnow made to me, I use a granite flat plate and a machinists 1-2-3 block to glue. This ensures a solid 90 degree joint and makes things more accurate.

Time for the test! To the right is one of the new cubes I made, before being finished with laquer. To the left is the original IP cube. I made mine a bit tighter to compensate for the high humidity where I live...they should loosen up a bit in most locals. Even so, the fit between my cube and IP's was beautiful. After finishing, the wood turned out so similar that you really have to look twice to tell the difference!

And they're done! Time to grab a cold one and wait eagerly to see how they are recieved by the buying public at IPP! As a reward to those of you who stuck it out this long, here are the details on the Spiral Group, provided with the generous consent of Bill. Please remember this is copyrighted information and should be respected as such. To contact Bill about present and future Spiral Group puzzle availability, please send me an email and I'll get you in touch with him!