Playing with my balls
I mentioned a while back about a little puzzle.,
I finally finished it. I didn’t hurry and just did a little bit every now and then.
It was fiddly and required a lot of patience, some ingenuity and a lot of swearing. Towards the end it also required some dexterity, trying to slot pieces together when they are right in the heart of the construction, and that’s the only occasion where I broke a bit. Luckily that bit wasn’t essential and in fact it’s hard to find on the completed model.
There are some things to note. There are [apparently] 254 pieces which I didn’t bother to count. All of the pieces are just plain plywood with the exception of the handle and a couple of very short pins which act as axles. There is no glue and all the pieces just firmly slot into each other. It is remarkably firm and stable.
It works!
The only problem is that I have quite a few pieces left over, I mean quite large pieces which obviously look they are a major part of the construction, yet there is no mention of them in the instructions, nor is there anywhere they could obviously fit.
I think they are just there to confuse me.
The old engineer’s jape of slyly slipping some extra bit into the neat collection of parts awaiting reassembly after repair. Such larks!
You have far more patience than I Grandad. On top of that, Arthritis has taken over both thumbs.
(As dear old dad once told me, getting older is not for sissies son.
I recall having a spacer left over after completely stripping and rebuilding my motorcycle engine & gearbox many moons ago. I REALLY didn’t feel like tearing it apart again, and spent some time studying the workshop manual to establish where the spacer should have been. I decided it wasn’t that critical, and the bike ran perfectly for many years afterwards…
“…and a lot of swearing.”
Told you so!