Over the years, i've made quite a few of these little "brain teasers", in fact i made my first one back in the 70's. Everyone seems to have fun with them and like them a lot. I had forgotten how long it took to make all the parts... lol Anyway, lets get started on making four of them, as i want to give them away as gifts!
First i found a board that's been lieing around the shop a while that i thought had some nice looking wood in it, and i cut out the 4 pieces i needed...
Then it was time to run the pieces through the thickness planer, cleaning them up and getting them to the thickness i would need,
And while i was at it, i found another board i would need, and also planed it to the thickness that i would need that one to be too,
Now, it's time to "rough sand" the pieces with the belt portion of my belt disc sander,
And finish sand them with my random oribit sander,
Now it's time to break out the hole saws, (If you don't have hole saws, you could draw out the circles, and saw them out with a band saw, jig saw, or even a coping saw)
And hole saw out "little circles" with it, in the drill press,
Until i had all the different sized "little circles" sawn out!
Next, it's time to sand all the little circles, and i used my osolateing spindle sander to get all the edges nice and clean,
The hole saw bores a 1/4" hole when you use it, and i needed "bigger" holes in the circles, so it's time to bore the center holes larger. You can see the difference in the size of the holes in this pict.,
Because i was too lazy to turn one, i bought a 3/8" dowell and cut it into short lengths with my bandsaw, (these will be "pegs" that i will use later) and used my sander to round over one end on them,
Then i went back to the drill press to drill some holes into the blocks i made eariler! I drilled the holes 1/2 the thickness of the blocks deep, because the pegs i made will be glued into these holes.
FINALLY, we have all the parts made and it's time to do some final sanding and glue the pegs into holes, then putting some finish on everything, so you end up with something like this,
As you can see, over the years, i've made them out of "fancy", and plain wood, but they all work the same...
To play the game you start with all the disc on the center peg, like in the foreground. The rules are simple, You can only move ONE disc at a time, and you can NEVER put a bigger disc over a smaller disc! All the disc have to end up "in order" on any peg EXCEPT the center peg, like on the "fancy" game in the above pict...
So, make a few for your family, and have fun with them!
DM
