Impossible pinball in a wooden cube DANGER EXTREMELY UNSAFE

This is one of my favorites. The pinball in a single piece wooden block. As you can see, there is no way that a pinball is gonna fit into that hole. So let me show you how you can do this. This wooden cube right here is about two and a half inches (all the way around). ..but I think this one i'm gonna make two and a quarter. and here is the size of a pinball (or at least the pinball that i'm going to be using). For the holes, I'm going to be using a seven eighths inch spade bit. You need to find solid piece of softwood. I'm gonna use poplar for mine, but I would bet that pine would work just as well. If you can't find anything like that, try checking on the bottom of pallets; alot of times they use these for the bottom part. Originally I wanted to use a nine ball instead of a pinball, but I couldn't find a piece big enough for it. Maybe in the future though... Now, I want to get the insides nice and smooth with a drum sander. It turned out alright... This side got a little messed up, but that's because I should probably have been using a forstner bit. But it'll do just fine. The prototype had a chamfer on it, but on this one I'm going to put a roumd-over. I want this to look a little more round than it is, so i changed the quarter inch round over bit to a three eighths roundover bit. The bearing has been set in line with the fence. That'll keep this piece from getting sucked in towards the router bit At this point, you're probably just annoyed, and you want to know the secret. But i'm not going to tell you until tomorrow. Now I'm just gonna let it soak for about twenty-four hours. See you later. It's been twenty-four hours and I replaced the water that was in there with hot water, just in preparation for putting the bearing in, and it's been fizzing like Alka-seltzer for the last 10 minutes. So I'm going to give it another half an hour just to finish... whatever it is that it's doing. I'm going to use the vice to press the pinball into place, so I'm coating the pinball with mineral oil to help it on its way, and into keep it from rusting over the next couple days. I also made this PVC sleeve that'll help push the pinball in. To minimize the chance of splitting the piece while I'm pressing it in, I'm going to be pressing it in through the end-grain. Let me explain why. Let's take a look at it up close. Now let's take a look at it up really close. Consider, by way of analogy, that our block of wood isn't all that different in structure from a bundle of drinking straws. In fact, when you look at wood under a microscope, it looks very much like this. Then, you can imagine that our pinball passes through the end grain of the wood, with a lot better... alot easier than it would by being pressed directly through the center. Likewise, driving a chisel through the grain is going to be a lot easier this way, or through the top of the end grain itself than it would be to try to drive the chisel straight through. This analogy also lets us understand why a cross-grain cut is so much harder to make than a rip-cut. Now I'm gonna let it soak for just about ten minutes, just to help repair any damage that might have been done when I pressed it in. I don't want to dry it out too fast over the next couple of days, or else I run the risk of splitting it. After about three or four days, when it's completely dry, I'll probably use mineral to treat the wood. And then, give it a nice sanding and finish it with shellac. if you bring out the grain by (with) a nice finish, then its really apparent that there are no seams in the wood, and that really lends itself to a nice effect. I really hope you enjoyed the video; thanks for watching! I guess I should show you how to get the pinball back out... Captioning by pocket83 :)

Channel: pocket83

Views: 6,736,656

Rating: 4.4964247 out of 5

Keywords: carpentry, woodworking, cube, pinball, in, trap, cage, puzzle, wooden, wood, router, table, saw, miter, lathe, how, to, make, sphere, ball, geometry, block, trick, magic, fun, project, easy, diy, Do It Yourself (Hobby), making, how to, math, maths, engineering, inside, angles, Magic (illusion), free, energy, physics, perpetual, motion, tutorial, help, pool, billiards, bandsaw, drill, press, planer, chisel, tips, tricks, at, home, improvement, remodeling, cellulose, structure, science, biology

Id: qO7aFRO5WMw

Length: 7min 40sec (460 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 09 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/26thRedditAccount]

The way the guy made this video is very pleasant. I'd watch him making just about anything like that.

[u/aeuoaueoaueu]

TL;DW soak the cube in water.

[u/davios]

I kinda wish that I had all these tools, just to make shit to have on my office desk.

[u/thegnome54]

I did this once too! The smallest possible hole this will work with is 71% the width of the marble/pinball you want to put inside. I did the math on my blog if anyone wants to see. I also developed a technique for staining the cube after the marble is inserted without coloring the marble itself.

http://criticaltinkerer.blogspot.com/2013/08/impossible-marble-in-truncated-cube.html

[u/JAV0K]

That straw thing was really interesting.

[u/[deleted]]

Reminded me of that time I stuck a pinball in my ass hole

[u/Jungianshadow]

That ending was like toppling a perfect sandcastle after it had just been finished!

[u/Creativation]

There's another excellent and brief video demonstrating a similar method called, Impossible nail-through-wood trick. Boiling the wood can make the initial part of the process go a bit faster.

[u/[deleted]]

My girlfriend: "He sounds like American Psycho"