Pillars of Hercules – Assembly puzzle by Stewart Coffin (STC #78)

Pillars of Hercules

Assembly puzzle by Stewart Coffin (STC #78)

Assemble the seven pieces into a 3x3x3 cube.

Pillars of Hercules is one of Coffin’s lesser-known designs. It’s an unusual twist on the venerable 3x3x3 cube assembly puzzle, with several of its pieces dissected into half-cubes in a curious way.

Coffin himself was a bit dismissive of this design, writing “for all that extra trouble to make, hardly worth it,” perhaps contributing to its relative obscurity. Yet while it is indeed quite difficult to produce using traditional woodworking techniques, it is an extremely easy print! In my opinion, printing a copy is certainly worthwhile, and hopefully 3D printing can help many others enjoy this rare and creative design.

Other Coffin designs that use the same concept include Pieces-of-Eight, Triple Cross, and Design No. 78-A (the latter a sort of sequel to this one).

Printing Instructions

Just print one copy of coffin.pillars-of-hercules.pieces.stl. That’s it! You may optionally print coffin.pillars-of-hercules.box.stl, a display box that can hold the assembled puzzle in place, as shown in the cover photo.

I’ve also included a smaller version, coffin.pillars-of-hercules.pieces-smaller.stl, that uses around 1/3 less material.

The Printable Puzzle Project

The Printable Puzzle Project aims to make available high-quality open-source models of many puzzle designs. All of our models are posted with the generous permission of their designers and are licensed for non-commercial use only. Anyone may print copies for their own personal use, but selling or otherwise monetizing them is not permitted, and puzzle designers retain all rights as copyright holders of their work.

Our puzzles are modeled using the open-source puzzlecad library. The .scad file is included with this model in case you want to modify any of its design parameters; more information on how to do this can be found in the PPP Puzzle Modeling tutorial.

About the Designer

Stewart Coffin has been called “the most outstanding designer and maker of interlocking puzzles that the world has ever seen”. He is credited with over four hundred designs, has pioneered numerous ingenious puzzle forms, and has written extensively about puzzle design and craftsmanship. More information on Coffin, along with many other printable models of his designs, can be found on the Stewart Coffin Puzzles overview page.

Happy puzzling!