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Diagonal Star
Diagonal Star
This design is very old -- nobody really knows who invented it. In Stewart Coffin's book "Puzzling World of Polyhedral Dissections", he writes:
The simplest version of this puzzle is made from one kind of wood with each piece cut from one solid stick, and the ends notched. When Stewart Coffin began making these puzzles, he used a construction method that involved gluing two tetrahedral blocks onto the ends of a six sided center block. The Pacific Puzzleworks method involves attaching two rhombic pyramid blocks onto the ends of a squat octahedral block. Beyond the aesthetic advantages of constructing the puzzle in this manner (such as using contrasting wood on the interior of the puzzle) this technique also allows the rhombic pyramids to be attached onto either the end grain or the side grain of the squat octahedron.
Here at Pacific Puzzleworks, each Diagonal Star puzzle is made with three pieces oriented along the end-grain, and three along the side grain -- the reason that we does it this way is so that when the weather changes (temperature & humidity) half of the pieces will get tighter, while the other half gets looser -- the result is a better fitting puzzle all year long! Furthermore, every glue joint is internally reinforced with three small steel dowel pins (36 total!) for the utmost in precision alignment, durability, and ease of do-it-yourself repair should the need ever arise. Crafted with attention to detail which is second to none, you will never find a higher quality Diagonal Star for sale anywhere else in the world. Each puzzle is laser-signed and dated. Ships disassembled.
Someone, somewhere, perhaps in the mid-19th century, made the marvelous discovery that the ends of the Diagonal Burr sticks can be beveled to produce a puzzle that, when assembled, is the first stellation of the rhombic dodecahedron. According to puzzle collector and historian Jerry Slocum, a puzzle of this sort was sold as early as 1875. The only patent on it that [Coffin] is aware of is Swiss Patent No.245,402 to Iffland in 1946.
The simplest version of this puzzle is made from one kind of wood with each piece cut from one solid stick, and the ends notched. When Stewart Coffin began making these puzzles, he used a construction method that involved gluing two tetrahedral blocks onto the ends of a six sided center block. The Pacific Puzzleworks method involves attaching two rhombic pyramid blocks onto the ends of a squat octahedral block. Beyond the aesthetic advantages of constructing the puzzle in this manner (such as using contrasting wood on the interior of the puzzle) this technique also allows the rhombic pyramids to be attached onto either the end grain or the side grain of the squat octahedron.
Here at Pacific Puzzleworks, each Diagonal Star puzzle is made with three pieces oriented along the end-grain, and three along the side grain -- the reason that we does it this way is so that when the weather changes (temperature & humidity) half of the pieces will get tighter, while the other half gets looser -- the result is a better fitting puzzle all year long! Furthermore, every glue joint is internally reinforced with three small steel dowel pins (36 total!) for the utmost in precision alignment, durability, and ease of do-it-yourself repair should the need ever arise. Crafted with attention to detail which is second to none, you will never find a higher quality Diagonal Star for sale anywhere else in the world. Each puzzle is laser-signed and dated. Ships disassembled.
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