Dodecahedron

While working in Florida, I had none of my wood working tools. There was a small machine shop in the hangar where we had our office spaces. I had just finished reading a book written by Mario Livio about the Golden Ratio(Φ). There is a wood dodecahedron on the cover, and the Golden Ratio figures in its form (that is, of course, why he put it there). Not having wood working tools, I turned to metal, and made this dodecahedron out of copper. I could solder and patinate it for very little money. First was a paper model to get the angles and joining methods down. Can’t show you all that, I tossed it when I learned what I needed. That’s the why.

I bought copper sheet and cut it up and bent it to shape. Then, using a small propane torch and solder, I joined up the pieces in the only place available- on the stove in my rental unit. The joints were held with binder clips, which sometimes slipped. Anyone who works with copper knows that it conducts heat really well, and when a binder clip slipped, I was reminded. Didn’t get burnt too badly! Once the shape was finished, it went into a tote with laundry bleach in the bottom. I set the shape on some rocks, so that only the fumes could reach it. After about a week, it was a nice copper-chloride color. I dumped out the tote (down the drain) and scrubbed and rinsed well, because the next step was to use ammonia, and the combination of ammonia and bleach releases toxic Chloramine gas. Back into the tote with it. Overnight, the dark green came on strong. If I had realized it was going to be that fast a reaction, I would have checked it sooner! Turned out OK, as I scrubbed it well and enough of the chloride was visible.

I used an aquatic setting for this, as the Golden Mean figures heavily in all kinds of marine growth, and as a nod to Dr Livio for the inspiration I’ve included a pic of the cover of his book.

It’s just under 12" across, vertex to vertex.

tl;dr version- copper dodecahedron, soldered together and patinated with chlorine and ammonia in separate stages.