BALL-O-CAPS, CLACKEY-SACK

  Alright so I'm not momentarily nimble enough to Hacky the Clackey, but I still love to slap them around. They sound great and the dead-blow nature of the ball-o-caps slows down the action just enough to make it fun.


I've made a number of these balls-o-caps over the years, but I always tied them together with soft wire. I've recently mastered tying them up with string. Here's a few of the new ones.

  In the Acorn-Bamboo article I mentioned Poly. That excellent  shareware program shows 157 shapes. Crystallographic Polyhedra by Dr. Steffen Weber also shows several really cool ones. It's under the Wireframe Polyhera heading on his homepage jcrystal.com  

BAMBOO ACORN RHOMBIC DODECAHEDRON

 Yeah one of those. Looks like it might make a pretty cool Christmas tree ornament huh? Good thing it's only mid October, it took about three hours to get this one done. After I figured out how to get the knots tight enough (hemostats) it went pretty smooth. 

 I love working with bamboo and acorns, but haven't thought of anything this interesting lately. I picked up most of the acorns in the Plush Neon Monkeys yard. Then I broke a bunch drilling the holes with an Xacto. Good thing I had a stash from past acorn projects.

 The bamboo was left over from earlier projects too. I made a whole bunch (two or three square feet) of bamboo beads, most of which split while drying. Mimosa sticks work good too. The seasonal growth is pretty soft, and has a pith core you can push out. We used to make beads out of them when we were little.

 I thought I was making a cube octahedron (intersections only) but I couldn't get the acorn caps to tie that close together. The symmetry I was after, was fours surrounded by threes. After I was done I looked for my symmetry on Poly, and found it in the Catalan solids list.

 During the assembly phase the model developed some weird tensions. It seemed like it was heading for the ditch, but I remembered the plastic strap rhombic triacontahedron Sarah (MillieKitty's human) and I assembled with pop-rivets. It developed such weird tensions that as we were getting close to closing it up, it pulled it's self into a wad. So this time I was confident that if I stuck with the symmetry and made sure all my fours were surrounded by threes eventually it would close up.

 Ok, its not a block but it is fun and thought provoking. Interpreting polyhedra is one my favorite things to play at. The plastic strap models were springy and cast cool shadows, and the pillow forms are just nice to have around. Gotta love a 32 sided pillow, eh?

  I used Jute twine cause I liked the color, but I realize now the knot tension thing would have been easier if I'd used elastic.The jute was a bit of a pain, but with a waxed end on it, getting it through the holes wasn't that bad. It definitely looks funky and organic.