Here is my contribution to the UK Johnson Solid Project – number 40, an elongated pentagonal orthocupolarotunda!

This one is quite a bit smaller than the J68 I made for the US project, but still took me a while to make as it has a lot of components. There are 15 triangles, 15 squares and 7 pentagons in total, and it is made up of a pentagonal cupola (which is Johnson solid number 5) and a pentagonal rotunda (Johnson solid number 6) joined together by a decagonal prism (essentially a ring of ten squares around the middle).

The J68 I made also has a pentagonal cupola as part of the shape (this is a decagonal face made up of a pentagon surrounded by squares and triangles) so I thought it would be nice to use the same colours to highlight the connection between them and the two projects.

The shape is interesting as it looks completely different from different sides. I really like the pentagonal rotunda side (a partial icosidodecahedron made from pentagons and triangles) as well.

I really glad that I got to make a second Johnson Solid for the UK project – it’s been fun making a piece that’s very different to the other shape!

Here’s a variation on my Sunburst dodecahedron from a while back. Unfortunately it wasn’t very sunny when I tried to photograph it though!

It’s made in the same way with Sue Harle’s diagonal tubular peyote technique, but the construction is a bit different. Here it is side by side with the original version:

The difference is where the outward points are on each side – in the original they are in the middle of the edges of the polyhedron, while in the variation they are at the vertices. I really like the contrast between the two shapes!

This technique is so flexible – which means I have a lot more polyhedra like this planned!

A little while ago I wrote about the Beaded Johnson Solids Project set up by Diane Fitzgerald, a project to make all 92 Johnson solids out of beads. I volunteered to make number 68, the Augmented Truncated Dodecahedron. After a lot of time spent making decagons here it is!

I’ve named the beadwork version Reflecting Pool. In total it’s made from 11 decagons, 1 pentagon, 5 squares and 25 triangles. To give a better idea of the shape here’s an animation of the polyhedron made using Stella4D Pro:

Here’s the net of the beadwork shape before it the final assembly. I think it looks like a series of connected pools, which is where the name Reflecting Pool came from.

Before I started joining the beadwork net together I did a trial run with a paper model – fortunately my beadwork skills are better than my papercraft skills!

I really like how the shape turned out. The decagons seem quite sensitive to even the small size variations in the beads and so ended up slightly concave rather than as flat as the ones I made initially. However, I really like how they end up looking when joined together.

I’m tempted to make a plain truncated dodecahedron, with just decagons and triangles, however it might have to wait a while until I manage to make 12 more decagons!

Making polyhedra using round beads and polyhedral angle weave is my current favourite bead technique! Here’s an augmented dodecahedron made using 4mm beads:

This is a dodecahedron with extra dodecahedra added to each face (augmentation). In theory there should be a slight gap between each neighbouring dodecahedron, but with the beadwork you can merge them together to end up with this shape.

It did require quite a lot of concentration to weave but it was still an enjoyable experiment. I’m definitely going to be trying more shapes like this!

The Johnson solids are strictly convex polyhedra with regular polyhedra as faces – that is polygons with sides and angles that are all the same. Near-miss Johnson solids however are strictly convex polyhedra that almost have regular polyhedra as faces, but not quite. There are actually a lot of interesting polyhedra that meet this definition. And since they are almost regular you can try making them using same sized beads and let the beadwork distort slightly to make up for the slight differences needed.

Here are a few of them made with illusion cord and 4 mm beads using “polyhedral angle weave” (which is just regular angle weave used to make the various polygons that make up a polyhedron).

The first one is a truncated triakis tetrahedron, which has 12 pentagon and 4 hexagon faces:

This was easy to make and only needs 42 beads. It’s fairly small and makes a nice little beaded bead!

The next is a chamfered dodecahedron. This is similar to a truncated icosahedron but with ten more hexagons:

This one has 120 beads and works really well. It’s a bit bigger than a truncated icosahedron and looks very round, definitely one of my favourites!

The third is a rectified truncated icosahedron. This is basically a truncated icosahedron with triangles added between all the faces:

This one has 180 beads and is less round but is still an interesting shape!

The next is an expanded truncated icosahedron, which is sort of like a truncated icosahedron version of a rhombicosidodecahedron. It has triangle, square, pentagon and hexagon faces:

This has a lot more beads – 360 in total – and is much bigger than the others. It was a struggle to keep it looking reasonably symmetric, but the patterns made up by the combination of pentagons or hexagons surrounded by triangles and squares are really quite pretty.

The last one is a snub rectified truncated icosahedron and is like a truncated icosahedron version of a snub dodecahedron. It’s made up from triangles, pentagons and hexagons:

This is larger still at 450 beads and does not work well at all! The faces are just too far away from regular to work with identical beads and it just wasn’t possible to get it to be symmetric. Well, not all experiments work! I’ll definitely be making some of the smaller ones again though!