Now that I have the materials required to polish Corian, I took some of my larger pieces and made some cutting boards for our kitchen.
Tiling Blocks
The latest toy I’ve made out of Corian is tiling blocks:
So far I’ve made squares, half-square right triangles, equilateral triangles, parallelograms, and 3 sizes of rectangles. They all fit together, with all their sides (with the exception of the hypotenuse of the right triangle) being equal or multiples of each other.
If you really want, you can treat them like normal blocks and play with them in 3D space as well:
The big problem with them is that since we’re giving them to the kids for Christmas, I’m not allowed to share this exciting new toy with them yet, which is absolutely horrible. Woe is me.
Ring Puzzle
I was so pleased with out the Coran discs turned out, that I went looking for something else to make on my lathe out of Corian.
The object of the puzzle is to move the rings so that they’re both on the same loop.
I’ve made puzzles like this before, and I helped a group of Boy Scouts make them for their woodworking merit badge, but this is the first time I’ve bothered trying to make a nice version.
It turned out OK.
The wood is mahogany, and the rings are Corian.
Cheating
Once he was taught the trick of how to solve it, I gave my eldest the assignment of counting how many steps it takes to complete the the Tower of Hanoi puzzle for when there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 discs. Then I was going to sit down with him and explore that relationship.
Instead, he comes to me with a chart showing the number of moves it would take with up to 20 discs. And they were right.
He noticed the pattern himself and “cheated” by applying the formula instead of counting it out by hand.
I’m so proud.
We then went on to calculate that if The Flash could do one million steps per second, it would still take him longer than the age of the universe to solve a 100-disc version.
Towers of Hanoi
I tried my hand at turning Corian this week. It was harder than I thought it would be, but I finally got it working.
So, I was able to make a Towers of Hanoi puzzle.
The discs are two different colors of Corain, the base is mahogany, and the dowels are cherry. It’s finished with mineral oil.
Tangrams and Fractals
This was a result of a serendipitous miscommunication.
Since I got my hands on some Corian scraps, I’ve been trying to think of good things to make out of it. I had never played with them before, but a tangram set looked like a good fit.
I printed out a tangram pattern and asked Mary Cate how big she thought I should make it. She then answered either “no bigger than that” or “no smaller than that”, depending on which one of us you ask. I went ahead and made the biggest set I could out of the scraps that I had available:
We played around with it, and while it was neat, it was just too darn big. Mary Cate was right! Or wrong! So I made another tangram set, half the size (in area) of the first one. Better, but maybe still too big, so I made an even smaller set, half the size of the previous one. And then for good measure, I did it again:
The neat thing about each one being half the size of the previous one is that a tangram is built out of triangles that are 2 and 4 times the size of the smallest one, so the pieces from one set fit together with the other sets.
It also means that these sets together are really good for making fractal patterns:
Coin Packing
Here’s a little puzzle/toy that I made this weekend — you have to try to fit 13 nickles into the tray.
They’re slightly different sizes, so the same solutions don’t work on both of them.
Corian Puzzle
I few weeks ago, I got my hands on some scrap Corian that was left over from some counter tops. I’ve been trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it first, and today I made a copy of the classic “T” tanagram puzzle.
I think that Corian is the perfect material for a puzzle like this — it’s feels so solid and smooth in your hands, and it’s so satisfying how it clinks together.
Satyrs
My friend Karl asked for a couple more fawns/satyrs to go with the fantasy set I’m making for him.
Mary Cate was so pleased with her designs for the two new ones that she re-did the original one to match.
Here’s the first set, and I’m under strict instructions to make a new set for our home very soon.
Bookcase
About a year and a half ago, I finished my first free-standing bookcase. I was so pleased that I turned right around and started two more.
It took me a year to finish the first one.
It’s been six months since I did any work on the second one, until this weekend, when I glued the face frame on:
Hopefully it won’t take me six more months to finish this project. We could really use the shelf space.
