EcrosTechWiki | Woodworking / Puzzles and Games

When my wife and I moved to the house we now live in, we had a tree taken down. It was very misshapen, as the neighbors had removed any branch that went over to their side of the fence and the weight of limbs on just side had caused it to lean and completely overshadow our back lawn. I had the arborists leave behind a few logs for our fireplace, which I split with a wedge and sledgehammer. I let a couple of pieces dry out, sliced them up on my table saw (since replaced with a worse one) and turned them into a couple of soma cube puzzles. And that was it for thirty years until I took up woodworking.

Chain and Box Puzzle

Seven Wood Soma Cube

As I mentioned in the introduction to this page, I made a couple of soma cubes many, many years ago, before I took up woodworking. I made them from a tree felled in our back yard, using an old table saw, without paying much attention to their appearance. I just wanted to preserve some small samples of this tree and I was slightly interested in the puzzle. Now I have a new table saw with a custom throat-plate, a cross-cut sled, etc., I wanted to see what would happen if I did pay attention to the appearance. In most cases, I was able to hold the dimensions of the component cubes to an accuracy of a few thousandths of an inch. The purpleheart threw me further off, but I wasn't in the mood to start that piece again, so here it is.

In this picture of the pieces separated, the woods are as follows. In the back row — cherry, purpleheart, goncalo alves and claro walnut. In the front row — maple, padauk and canarywood.