In recent years more and more people have been transforming puzzles and in many cases building new ones from scratch. There is obviously an enormous amount of talent out there. What I am wondering though, is what else have you made? Personally, I have worked on many projects in my lead up to puzzle making. I was always Drawing or constructing something. My biggest project was an Egyptian chess set. I made the six different types of piece out of plasticine. I then made latex moulds and cast the final pieces in resin. It was a great learning exercise in my build up to puzzle making. I quickly realised how much latex shrinks and distorts (the queen in particular has suffered). If you have any photos of your non puzzle projects please post them here.

A few years ago when my puzzle collecting was just starting out, I built a fully functional mechanical clock entirely out of legos I accumulated over the years. Actually two things in the clock were not lego. One is a string, and the other is a wieght that attaches to the string. The clock runs for about 3 hours before having to raise the wieght. One of these days I will improve the design when I get more pieces. After I made mine, I looked on the internet only to find that others have designed much better ones, granted they did have many more pieces than me.

attached is a side and a front view.

-d