Design by Peter Query

The Balls Pyramid is built with wooden spheres which are piled up to a pyramid or other shape. In fact a sphere could always be replaced by a rhombic dodecahedron in 3D-put together puzzles. The figure below shows a pyramid made out of twenty rhombic dodecahedrons. You can also make a pyramid using 4, 10, 35 or more dodecahedrons.

The puzzle shown here consist of six pieces. These pieces are shown below. The solution of this puzzle isn't very easy. When you want to make this puzzle you need twenty rhombic dodecahedrons. These figures could be made out of wood or simply fold out of a piece of paper.

Wood. You need a beam with a square diameter. This beam must be fixated in a bench and cant 45°. Four angles are sawn under an angle of  45°. The complete dodecahedron can be cut of the beam by sawing another four angles of 45°. So total you must saw eight cuts to produce one block. After sawing, sand, file and polish the dodecahedron. Glue the dodecahedrons together according to the diagram above, or use your own design.

You can also made rhombic dodecahedrons using four C-pieces form the group op rhombic blocks. This is more easily than the method described above.

Paper. Use several A4-sheets because these sheets has the same proportion as the diamonds of a rhombic dodecahedron. fold the sheet double in length and width seven times, so you get 64 facets. Cut the paper in sixteen rectangles. All these rectangles are divided in four. Fold the sixteen pieces so you get a diamond. With twelve of those diamonds you can glue one dodecahedron together. The figure below will make more clear.