Carousel Puzzle

Hi Guys,

Ha, I went into a Casino one time and asked why the carpets were so loud and busy.  The guy told me that it keeps your eyes from looking at the floor and on the tables.  I thought I might apply that to making a puzzle box by making it busy to look at with hypnotizing gears that look so cool spinning.

I had been wanting to make gears for awhile now, it wasn't too difficult as much as it was a lot of time to produce.  There is no real stress load on the gear teeth so I wasn't too concerned about the short grain issue with some of the teeth.  I did take the time to explore making other gears with more intentional grain direction.  These days I typically make the gears from cross-laminated material for maximum strength, but this was fun .

I can't really show you all of the mechanisms inside the puzzle, collectors wouldn't be liking that, so I respect, but I can show you some of the random mechanisms that had to be created for this to work the way it does.  A buddy once told me that I was just an engineer that never went to school, haha.

This locking system uses a combination of physical and magnetism forces as its secret.  This was a great design to build because I could leave the bottom off until I was sure that the lid worked just right.  

I only made 6, and that was enough for me!

A big challenge was creating two different locking systems for each level/layer of gears so that multiple actions are happening and just maybe its all about timing, ha!