Hi Everyone, second "puzzle" of the day; The Stone Skewb

VIDEO



The Stone Skewb is a design variation of the Skewb Cube puzzle. The colour of the plastic has been changed from White, to a Grey stone colour and texture using a type of spray paint. It is still fully manipulable, though it has lost its solving challenge as all the pieces are identical in colour. I don’t consider this a hindrance as I made it with the intention of it becoming a decorative piece or simply an object that can be manipulated in a therapeutic manner.





As mentioned above, the stone effect was achieved by using a stone textured spray paint. Typically spray paint will only sit on the surface of the plastic; therefore over time it would wear. Though the piece was mainly intended to be decorative, I did want it to be tolerable to standard play, so I tested a few ideas I had to try and strengthen the paint.

It is a well known fact that the more surface area there is on an object, the stronger the bond will be if another object is adhered to it. I decided to apply this to the puzzle; sanding each face quite roughly so as to provide more area for the paint to ‘hold onto’.

The first coat I applied was reasonably, but not too thick and I left the paint to dry for just over a day (Friday afternoon through to Saturday evening. I checked the paint periodically throughout this time and found that the paint was staying on the plastic by Saturday afternoon, but it still felt a little soft.

By the time I checked in the evening the pieces were fully dry and the paint solid. Before assembling the puzzle, I tidied up the inner facing parts of the piece that had a little paint on them (in hindsight I should have covered those parts with masking tape before the spray painting process).



I think the puzzle looks really nice with the stone effect finish; natural to an extent and aesthetically pleasing in my opinion.





Cheers
Ryan

Very nice and clean. Now make one that looks like wood . Are you planing on stickering it?

i very much like it!

It looks wonderful!

Now put some hollow stickers on it so you can scramble it, but you don't cover up the great look. Will stickers even work on that texture?

Dave

Wow. Looks really cool. I'm now gonna do that with my 3x3 .

Thanks

Yes I agree, hollow "stickers" are definitely the finish it needs. I have a feeling actual stickers won't look very good at all, so i'm thinking of making a stencil of some sort and spray painting the colours on in Greyscale.

I don't think you made this at all, I think it's just an artifact recovered from Stonehenge! Aliens must've visited ancient civilizations to introduce the practice of solving twisty puzzles, clearly in an effort to exercise our mindpower! This changes everything!

I suggest carving some runes or some other archaic symbols into the sides in place of stickers to make it look authentically ancient. That would be so awesome!

What about this? If you used gold shiney stickers cut to look like ore veins going through the skewb and cover them up when you are stoning the pieces. That would give enough to have a solve state.

Apologies for Photoshop rubbishness btw.

I like this design, thanks for the suggestion.

I think i'll have to make a few more samples of the puzzle and experiment with different finishes!

Or how about just leaving the stone to age in its natural habitate, and it will hopefully eventually be covered with moss in different shades of green in a way that elegantly solves the stickering problem. After all, if Candyfloss can grow on a standard 3x3x3, there is reason to believe that moss can grow on a Stone skewb...

Awesome! I love the looks of it. It looks a little bit like a Brillo Pad. Well done Ryan.

This looks awesome !
I was thinking it would be more awesome if the veins were like some fluorecent color !
That way the veins would glow in the dark ...

I was thinking instead of stickers ... turn iT all into a spray paint job ..
Spray roughly where you wan tthe veins to be ...
Then add stickers or a paper cover on top of them in the shape of the veins or cracks..
Finally spray the whole thing in stone spray ..
Instant awesome !

I might acctually try that myself
... This got me excited !

I think that stone feel would be great as the base coat on a borg puzzle...

If I would walk around outside and would see such a shaped stone I would be quite...

...[who can guess?] ...

puzzled!

Wait, I have another one: If all stones had the shape of skewb cubes, would all puzzles have the shape that stones have now? Or if all stones looked like acutall stickered puzzles would we collect mere stones? And also would someone like Ryan make a puzzle that would look like a puzzle in that case?

And now for everyone who really wants to challenge his sanity:

Would someone like me post in a forum:
"If I would walk around outside and would see such a shaped puzzle I would be quite...

...[who can guess?] ...

stoned!

Wait, I have another one: If all puzzles had the shape of a stone, would all stones have the shape that puzzles have now?" ?

No wait, I got things mixed up. I mean stones would still be called stones but just look differently, so the question stays the same. Or doesn't it? Errmm..
Now I'm out. Better don't challenge my own sanity...