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A couple of questions

PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 12:54 am
by cappells
Just curious, what is your preferred method for deconstruction? Are you meticulous in taking things apart, keeping like colors or shapes together as you go, or are you a bit more reckless? I take a reckless, yet efficient approach (at least to me). I start by meticulously, yet rapidly, removing all the spheres from a construct leaving a mass of bars and panels. I then take the mass of bars and panels and shake out all the panels until I'm left with one mass of bars and a pile of panels on the floor (or table). I then convert the mass of bars into long strings of multicolored bars, letting the magnetism do most of the work (kinda like pulling strands from a ball of yarn). From there, it is relatively easy to separate the colors of the bars into their respective colors, and then finally, I separate the panels into their shapes and colors and then stack them onto 6-bar length rods capped on the ends by 2 spheres. Does anyone have a better method?

I decided to go thru my collection of bars and mark the north end of each bar with a sharpie (permanent marker) to use as a visual cue on polarity in addition to the magnetic cue. It is a long and tedious process, and I'm about 1/3 done with my 2100+ collection of bars. So my 2nd question is: Am I crazy? :)

Re: A couple of questions

PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 2:26 pm
by Peter Jepsen
I do more or less the same. I pluck a handful of bars 'n spheres and rotate the lump in my left hand while the right picks out the spheres. As you say, when the spheres are all gone, the bars help lining up automatically. (Auto-spaghetti I call it)

Regarding the marking of polarities and whether or not you're crazy.. If we weren't all a little bit crazy (I know I am :lol: ), life would be less fun.. :)

Re: A couple of questions

PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 4:33 am
by cappells
...and here is the fruits of my tedious labor:
geomag_marked.jpg

Re: A couple of questions

PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 9:19 am
by jgnorman
wow, that seems like too much work for me. I usually can just feel easy enough what polarity goes where, and if I did mark them I would probably think way too much about polarities and less about what I am actually creating. But each to their own.

Re: A couple of questions

PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 9:42 am
by Peter Jepsen
Curt, where did you get so many white bars?

Re: A couple of questions

PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 1:42 pm
by cappells
jgnorman wrote:wow, that seems like too much work for me. I usually can just feel easy enough what polarity goes where, and if I did mark them I would probably think way too much about polarities and less about what I am actually creating. But each to their own.

That's one vote for "crazy". :)

I hear ya, but part of my motive for doing this was to help my young daughter help me build better and faster. The things a parent does for their kids. :shock:

Re: A couple of questions

PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 1:48 pm
by cappells
Peter Jepsen wrote:Curt, where did you get so many white bars?

A few years ago, one of the national toy store chains, Kay Bee Toys, was going out of business. I was able to get a bunch of Color 20, 42, and 184 sets for US3.99, 7.99 and 29.99, respectively. The most common colors of those sets was red, blue, and yellow. When I found that there were also less common green and white sets, I made a point to look for those. I would be willing to trade away some of those green or white bars for black and orange ones, though :)

Re: A couple of questions

PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 10:16 pm
by Wim
The marking is something I couldn't bring myself to do if I wanted to :). It's like defacing the bars.

As far as disassembling goes: I pull off bars one color at a time and from then on go with whatever is exposed the most. Pull out a handful of spheres, which will leave a bunch of bars exposed so I go for bars (one color at a time) until there's a pile of panels on top (or another color bar becomes dominant in the heap), and so on.

Once my hands are full I pull the bars into a long string and fold those into the wooden boxes. My daughter often helps me with the clean up process, which does save me some time. She hands me a bunch of bars and I put them away.

Re: A couple of questions

PostPosted: Tue Mar 02, 2010 6:00 pm
by jgnorman
cappells wrote:I hear ya, but part of my motive for doing this was to help my young daughter help me build better and faster. The things a parent does for their kids. :shock:


Ahh, well in that case, I feel you are completely justified and not crazy at all. Going to extreme lengths for your children is never crazy in my opinion. (Who knows how valid that opinion is though, seeing as I am only 21 and definitely not married lol)

Re: A couple of questions

PostPosted: Wed May 26, 2010 12:23 am
by rgutierrez
Curt, I sincerioulsy envy your Geomag collection.
My humble collection count with about 400 bars and a few panels. Since in Brazil we don't have a distributor it's kind a dificult to increase my collection.
To disassembling my constructions I do exactly the samething you do: remove balls, compress the core and separate it in different collors, onto 6-bar length rods.
MAybe we have a common Geomag gen.