Featured Wooden Fraction Ball - anyone heard of this?

Hi! We found this wooden fraction ball at my husband's family farm. I am guessing it is at least 100 years old.

We thought we would take it to a cobbler to replace some of the leather straps which have worn over time. However, in researching we can't find anything like it. So now we are afraid to mess with it.

Does anyone have any history on something like this?

It's about 8" in diameter.

 

a ball made out of wood sections....neat !!!
looks like some kinda exercise equipment.....

 

Well I found another
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/antique-victorian-puzzle-ball-442856899
but I think their description was conjured from their rectum.

 

'I PLACED A RUBBER BAND AROUND THE TACKS AT THE TOP OF THE BALL TO HOLD IT TOGETHER'
Suspect it's the same one, unless they all have a rubber band around the tacks.


Edit: Or maybe not, if Kristen (hello, Kristen) & husband found it at farm. Just same solution to same problem.

 

Good find, Terry...and lol on the description!

It is a curious piece. Took some serious geometry to figure out all of those angles.

 

The first Rubiks cube!

 

A Geometry teaching aid, from the days of slates ?
(photo of my Dad's slate he used as a little boy.)

 

Not at all, it's just a sphere repeatedly sliced in half

 

Aha!

 

If all the pieces are held together - what's the puzzle?
Could be used (not saying it was) for impressing an interesting pattern upon thick dough. Could possibly have been a standard woodworkers apprentice project.
Maybe it was an early equivalent to a pet rock.
Times were certainly different.

 

some type of math device like an Archemedes Apple...?

 

Fascinating. Apparently he made all kinds.

https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/gnf/book2/Booknews2/kenn_sets.html

 

Interesting - even for a geometry failure !

 

His halves of eighths may be correct, but the quarters of the eighths are certainly not equal. Pretty shabby for a math teacher.

 

I loved geometry but would have loved it even more if teacher had one of these on hand. The principle is not one I can remember being taught. My dad went to a country school and at least once was surprised that I didn't know what to him was a simple fact of the geometry of a circle.

Speaking of my dad, I was starting to think, until all this great info was produced, that this was a wood shop novelty project, a neat thing to make if you were an avid student woodworker, as my dad was. The pryamidal sections reminded me of something my dad made for me when I was a young child. Sorry for thumbnails; don't want to hijack thread completely.

They have crumbled away, but on the bottom the ends stuck out from where a rubber band was held in place by the little plug. He teased me big time by drawing the hook up part way, then letting it go so it would snap back. I just couldn't catch that dang rubber band at all. He eventually taught me the secret. Do any of you know it? He would not have invented it, there would have been a pattern going around.