Tag Archives: Puzzle Box

Firewood

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Firewood by Hiroshi Iwahara is another beautiful looking puzzle box available from the Karakuri Creation group. Living up to its name, this pile of sticks made from a number of exotic woods really does look like a bundle of firewood, wrapped with string ready to be sold.

Firewood

Firewood

The puzzle was designed for an exhibition with a “forest” theme. Created in April 2011 this is the newest box from Iwahara(at the time of writing), and is a really cute box. It’s not the largest puzzle box out there, but is still a pretty good size at 5″x 4″x3.75″. Sitting in your hand, the puzzle feels good, the rounding of each firewood log makes it very tactile, and you find yourself turning it round and round. Now this may be because you can’t find out how to open it, as none of the logs in the centre of the puzzle seem to move and the outer logs are all glued together.

With over 10 hardwoods used in the puzzle, there’s a great array of colours and textures, making this a real feast for the eyes. I know that at the very least there’s Katsura, Oak, Rosewood, Zebrawood, Purpleheart, Bloodwood, Bubinga, Cherry, Black Ebony (big guess on the ebony) and Maple in there, based on my limited ability to identify woods from visual inspection. (Note: I may be entirely wrong, as there’s no conformation from the Karakuri group on this, so it’s all a guess)

Firewood

Firewood

I spent around 10 minutes poking and prodding the logs on this box before I found the trick, and the drawer popped open rather satisfyingly. It’s not the most challenging puzzle box out there, but it does exude a charm which is hard to pass up. The ‘lock’ really is incredibly simple, and it makes me smile each time I close it, with the drawer pulling itself back into place, then pop it back out with the trick. Very simple, but hugely satisfying.

Chiyo-Musubi

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“When we tie up a belt or paper tape well, a knot that is called “Chiyo-Musubi” is completed. In Japan, it is said to be a lucky knot.”

Chiyo Musubi

Chiyo Musubi

This fine looking box from Hiroshi Iwahara of the Karakuri Creation group is a sliding puzzle box with two hidden compartments requiring 19 moves to open both. The interesting point about this puzzle box is that the slides which conceal both hidden spaces cross one another, so the resulting mechanism is much harder to produce than a standard box. Iwahara notes that the shape of this particular knot is a Pentagon, but it is also possible to produce a Heptagon. He’s not planning to make a Heptagon version as a puzzle box though.

Created back in April this year, and measuring 9.5″ x 5″ x 2.75″ approximately, this is a big puzzle box, and it feels really solid when you’re solving it. I don’t exactly have small hands, and this box feels big to me when I’m working on it. I didn’t do too well on my wood identification in the video, as the only thing I got right was the Walnut! So to correct that, the box is made from Walnut, Oak and Angsana, giving it the striking appearance. To look at it, you really can get the feeling that someone has taken a plank of wood and knotted it like a belt.

I borrowed this puzzle box from Derek Bosch (yes he has a good collection and has been very kind to lend me chunks of it at a time), so I’m not sure if it’s just his copy or not, but the panels are fairly loose, to the point that when solving it, some of the panels would slide back to where I’d moved them from as I turned the box over in my hands. While it doesn’t take away from the box, it can make it a challenge to open, as you have to be careful that panels don’t slide around on their own as you move the box. Not realising that a panel slid back after you moved it preventing further progress can be a pain.

This is a really nice puzzle, and I have to admire the design, especially the ability to have pieces passing over and under each other to make a very slick puzzle. If I’m honest, it’s not my favorite puzzle from Iwahara, but it’s by no means a bad puzzle! It took around 10 minutes to open the box and find both hidden compartments the first time. Having gone back to it later, I can see that this could take much longer as the order you open the compartments does seem to come into play, so I may have been lucky the first time and opened them in the correct order.

Overall, a very nice puzzle and one which would certainly stand out next to other puzzle boxes, both for its size and striking contrast of woods.

Hadrian’s Box

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a DIY Puzzle Box

Some time back, I purchased a couple of DIY puzzle boxes from BH Pen & Laser Crafts which are kits based on Bruce Viney’s designs.

Bruce makes a large number of puzzle box designs, and supplies plans for you to cut your own pieces. He uses an interesting measuring system based on the thickness of the wood, so you can use any stock you have as long as you mark everything up based on thickness.

Rather than cutting all the pieces myself, I purchased the pre-cut kits to make my life easier. I didn’t really feel like spending days cutting all the parts myself, not to mention that some of the pieces are pretty small, making for some challenging cuts.

The video shows the full process from start to finish, using time-lapse. Overall, it took around 2.5 hours actually working on the kit. Including time for the glue to dry, it was around 5 hours.

Overall, it’s a good kit, despite the small issue I had. Since I’ll be receiving some replacement parts to fix that issue, I really can’t complain. If you’re thinking about getting one of these, I highly recommend the kit as it’s both well made, and Bruce’s instructions are pretty easy to follow. There’s minimal sanding needed, so pretty much anyone should be able to build on of these, and get pretty good results at the end.

Tier Box by Eric Fuller

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Tier Box is a Japanese style sliding panel puzzle box with a few unique touches, designed and made by Eric Fuller back in September 2009. The 18th marks its two year birthday, so I though it appropriate to add this review today.

The box measures 3.2″ cubed and is made from Quartersawn Bubinga for the outer panels, and Quartersawn Paduak for the internal panels. Along with that there’s a few magnets and some metal pins thrown in for good measure. 14 moves are required to open the box to reveal the space inside, and the same again to close it. Despite opening it fairly quickly, I must confess, it took me many more than 14 moves to close this one back up!

Eric has this to say about the box:

I am very happy with the results of this, my latest puzzle box. The design originates from a sketch I made in Chicago sometime during IPP23. It combines several ideas I have been wanting to implement in a sliding panel puzzle box. The solution requires 14 moves, but those moves are anything but straightforward and are at times downright devious. I had the pleasure of watching many puzzlers attempt to solve it during the course of IPP29, so I can say that difficulty wise it’s a nice 15 minute solve for most puzzlers, with several ah-ha’s to spice things up. Fully understanding the interactions between all the panels will likely take quite a bit longer.

Tier Box in its closed state

Tier Box in its closed state

There were only 34 copies of the box made, so I have to once again thank Derek for lending me his copy to puzzle over. It’s a fun box, and very solidly built. As Eric notes himself, fully understanding the interactions of all the panels certainly does take some time. I was able to open the box without too much trouble, finding it a fairly simple progression from one step to the next. Closing however was not the same story. I probably spent around 5 minutes opening the box, and well over 20 closing it again. At one point I thought I was going to have to give it back to Derek open as it didn’t look like I could figure out how to close it!

So from that experience it’s a challenging little box. The panels interact in interesting ways with each other, and the only way to truly say you’ve solved it is in understanding all the interactions. Despite the pins being around 1/16″, they really do get in the way!

Tier Box opened, showing the bright Paduak insides

Tier Box opened, showing the bright Paduak insides

One of the beautiful things about the choice of wood here is that the internals of the box being made from Paduak, are protected from UV, so have retained their beautiful Orange/Red colour which will normally fade to a dark brown if exposed to the sun. It’s a nice touch to have this colour screaming at you when working on the box.

My only criticism with the mechanism is that the thin sliding panels used in the internals of the box are fairly tight. While this is normally a good thing in a puzzle box, meaning the panels don’t rattle around of their own accord, I found that this worked against me when trying to close the box, as my fingers couldn’t push one of the internal panels far enough to slide it to where it needed to be through the small gap left when the outer panels were positioned in the correct locations. In the end, I had to get a small tool to help.

Overall, a superb box, that adds a few surprises to a standard sliding box, and creates a satisfying puzzle.

Stickman #18 – The Sphere Box

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Some time ago, I reviewed Stickman #2 from my own collection. My good friend Derek Bosch recently lent me another (large) box of puzzles to keep me busy, including Stickman #18, and also Stickman #23, the Perpetual Hinge Puzzle box. Watch out for a review of that one coming soon.

This beautifully made box measures 3″ in diameter, and is made from a selection of exotic woods including padauk, bloodwood, monticello, cocobolo, and holly. Limited to a run of 31 puzzles, like many other Stickman puzzles, this is fairly rare, so I’m very grateful to Derek for lending me his copy.

This sphere inside a sphere does still qualify as a box, since the holly sphere in the centre is hollow. The goal of the puzzle is to open the box, removing the inner sphere from the outer cage, by rotating the inner sphere until it can be slid out of an opening in the cage.

There are a number of black pegs attached to the inner sphere which make this challenging, and even with the two peg shaped gaps in the cage, it’s not always possible to move the inner sphere where you want it. This is where the hidden trick of the cage comes into play. As you may have already realised, if the ball is captured in a solid cage, there’s no way it’s coming out of there. The cage itself is held together with a couple of small magnets, and one quarter of the cage swings out of the way to allow the inner sphere to eventually be removed, but also to allow you to move those pegs into locations that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to move to.

The pegs and gaps form a 3D maze which must be navigated to move the inner sphere into the correct orientation for it to slide out. Initially, I wasn’t sure whether using the extending nature of the cage was permitted, as it seems to make the solution a little too easy, however it’s not possible to move some pegs at all as there are no gaps, as you can see in the photograph below. Derek also confirmed that this wasn’t cheating, and that I did need to do this to be able to solve the puzzle. I feel this makes the puzzle a little too easy if I’m honest.

Stickman #18 - The Sphere Box

Stickman #18 - The Sphere Box

I found the inner sphere to occasionally be a little stiff. Most notably, having opened the box, and removed half of the inner sphere, returning it back to its original state the re-insertion of the half was particularly tight. I’m not sure if I had changed the orientation while I had it open, but after moving the sphere around a little it soon went back to being easy to move.

Overall, this was a fairly easy puzzle box to open, taking me around 15 minutes. It’s a really unique box being spherical, and I must admit that really enjoyed solving it. It’s a fun puzzle to play with, and is finished to a very high standard, as seems to be the Stickman way. If you come across one of these at auction, it’s well worth adding to your collection.

Japanese Puzzle Box

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This Japanese puzzle box by an unknown maker takes me back in my puzzling history. This was the first puzzle box I ever bought, and was on a trip to San Francisco with my family when I was finishing University around 14 years ago. This is where my fascination with puzzle boxes stems from, and it’s still a box that I enjoy opening even today.

Japanese Puzzle Box

Japanese Puzzle Box

As you can see it’s a standard Japanese box, with Yosegi patterns on all six sides. This box is fairly large for a Japanese puzzle box and comes in at a 5 Sun box.

So if woodworking wasn’t confusing enough given that everything is measured in inches for cuts (yes I’m Scottish, and we use the metric system for everything except speed and distance – don’t ask me why), and board feet for buying lumber (It’s simple enough when you understand, but way to confuse someone new to woodworking), the Japanese have another system called Suns. What it actually equates to is the following:

Sun Size Size in Inches
1 Sun 1.22″ (Mame)
1.5 Sun 1.83″ (Mame)
2 Sun 2.44″
2.5 Sun 3.05″
3 Sun 3.66″
4 Sun 4.88″
5 Sun 6.10″
6 Sun 7.32″
7 Sun 8.54″

This particular box is a 36 move box. It’s by no means the most complicated box to open as the sequence is (mostly) the same from start to finish. Once you find the sliding panels, the box follows the same sequence until the top panel slides off. Well that’s mostly true. There is one sneaky move towards the end of the 36 moves where one slider actually moves back to a previous position to allow the next move to take place. This certainly caught me out the first time I tried to open it (as I threw the opening instructions away), and it catches most people I have given this box to as well.

The image below shows a closeup of the internal mechanism for this box, which I find fascinating. If you click on the picture, you’ll see the full box, so if you don’t want to see the full box, don’t click the link. It doesn’t give anything away really, but now you’ve been warned.

Japanese Puzzle Box open

Japanese Puzzle Box open

The amount of work which went into this box is just stunning, especially when you consider that I paid less than $30 for it. This may be a mass manufactured box, but the quality of the fit and finish is excellent. Even the slides are well hidden with no visible gaps between the pieces.

As my first box, this holds a special place in my collection, and as a fairly large box it even has useful storage space inside if you want to keep a small object away securely hidden away. Just don’t use “The Big Bang Theory” method of opening it.