This is my new cylindrical wooden blind maze project. I made my first wooden blind maze long time ago from the book “Creative Puzzles of the World”. The puzzle described in this book is very simple. But the book describe a basic method. You can make a wooden blind maze by drilling a wood block from different sides and by closing some holes with wooden plunges. There is a lot of wooden blind maze on the market produced with this basic idea.
I am planing some puzzles with blind mazes and this is my experimental project for making them with a different method. My method is more difficult but more flexible. With this method you can design and make complex mazes very easily.
Instead of using a solid wooden block, I made this mazes into a real bamboo piece by layers. The small one is made of seven layer and the big one eight layer. The small one is is simple and big one is more complex. I used a 12 mm marble for both of them. For making complex mazes in small spaces it’s better to use small ball bearings (steel balls) about 4 ..6 mm. In design stage blind mazes looks simple, but when you try to solve they became more complex than you expect. Making approximately impossible blind mazes is easy. But I think an extremely difficult blind maze isn’t funny. After shaking 1-2 week they can go to unsolved puzzles shelve.
Finding bamboo may be difficult. For this reason you can make your own mazes into brass, copper, stainless steel or plastic pipes. After a little experience making blind mazes inside water glasses, coffee mugs, coke cans etc may be funny.
I prepared a document about how to design and craft cylindrical blind mazes. If you want make your own mazes you can download or preview from here this free PDF file and you can start to design and craft your own mazes. (0.9 MB on secure server box.com). This is a very easy project.
DIY Puzzles 