Hey Guys, finally finished up a run of puzzle boxes. I thought I needed a challenge and decided to make them out of different woods, lol, glad there was only 21 copies!
I am grateful that the collectors of this menagerie are flexible. The Aboyna burl copy had a lid that ended up warping and I couldn’t use it and naturally all of that burl colour was all gone and I had to resort to a slightly different shade for the new lid. I guess it makes it unique among the other unique boxes, lol.
It was a lot of fun seeing how different versions looked once completed. I did learn much about how different woods shrink at different rates as all the pieces were cattle the same size at the beginning. Not too much to work around though. Not sure if I will be building much with Ziricote, man does that stuff ever clog up a drum sander fast!
The whole EDOG story can be summed up in a quick video at the end…
Needless to say, there was a first EDOG puzzle box, and it was more bare bones and used barn board as its source material. I believe I only made two of them.
The basic concept was that the rather ordinary looking box would have some other little secrets regarding how it opened and the secret four drawers in the bottom space that were kept secure by a combination lock.
Many years later, some collectors asked me to build more of this design. Alas, I couldn’t as these puzzles get numbered and the value of each is assessed accordingly, so making more would devalue those 2 existing copies and I couldn’t have that.
In the end I decided to build a new design with the first one as a take off point as far as basic concept.
In the second new one I added the ever dangerous micro live trap (not really, it is but a fidget toy) as well as all new features below. One of the things I seem to enjoy is making it so that there is very little room left inside the box for anything of much use. In this case, the only room is in the tiny drawers hidden inside.
I will save you all the 30 some odd steps it take to solve and show you a few highlights from the journey.
Once you bypass the top trap and can solve the lid, you find yourself in a mine field of what might look like chocolate covered cherries or something, a favourite of the guy who the box was named for.
You may notice that the tiny solver spots on each ‘cherry’ or dial are not all in the same spot. Some are to an edge, while others are at the Center. This is a tiny clue as to their function. By exploring how the Dials work together and figuring out that there was a code available to make it easier for the 4 outer dial locations can be elusive. One of the knobs works secretly to kick out one of the banding trim pieces, which leads you to the one for the other side too.
Just to add a little difficulty, to lift the outer shell off the inner core you will have to hold 2 dials as you also begin to lift the outer shell up. What you are left with inside is four drawers that are all locked up from the inside.
The drawers are not so terribly difficult, there is a hole in each end, but it’s blocked, and only one end leads to a next step. So much fun right? As you can see there isn’t inch space to be found inside.
Part of the fun with puzzles is hiding the next activation point, this one seen way inside will release the second drawer.
When you get that next drawer open there is a tiny tiny treasure which is an even smaller leg hold trap that has a keychain attached.
Perhaps the funniest thing that has come from this puzzle is that the guys who bought them all decided to bear the experience of putting their finger in the top leg hold trap like it’s some manly version of the tide pod challenge, lol.
Hey thanks Scrappile, I guess it’s just something that started out as curiosity, grew to something I was passionate about, now I think it’s just an obsession, or so my kids tell me.
