Like many of us, Robert grew up with Spirograph. He’s is also involved in woodworking and wood turning. He has been putting together a pin router system that will cut spirograph designs into many kinds of wood projects.

(If the only kind of router you know is the box that delivers your internet, then you need to understand that there is also a woodworking power tool called a router.)

Carpenters use routers to shape the edges of boards. Routers can be hand held or mounted in a table, allowing you to move the wood rather than the machine.

A pin router adds a simple guiding system to the router table. The pin, aligned with the router bit, enables you to quickly and accurately copy complex patterns and shapes from a template into a piece of wood. Guitar makers and small shop furniture makers use pin routers for accurate, repeated cuts. (Learn more about them here if you’re interested.)

Enter Spirograph, and Robert Roehrig’s pin router.

He found that the die-cast metal Spirograph (which I reviewed here) is able to do things that plastic pieces are too flimsy for. (Plus, it looks cool.)

You can see that he has screwed the ring to a “sled” which he can move freely with his hands. A piece of wood is attached to the underside of the sled with double-sided tape. As he moves the sled, the wood is engraved by the router bit. The pin, visible on the top, is aligned with the router bit. Because he can’t see what’s happening, he has to trust that every movement of the sled is transferred to the wood.

When he inserts the pin in a pen hole in the Spirograph wheel, and he slowly moves the sled around while keeping the gears engaged, the router bit carves out a spirograph pattern in the wood below.

“It’s like doing Spirograph in reverse,” he says.

This next photo shows the router bit beneath the table. You can see how it lines up with the pin on top.

Here (above) it looks like he has put another piece of plastic on top of the ring that keeps the inside wheel from jumping out – a hazard familiar to anyone who has used a Spirograph.

Finally, here are some little Square Bottles he turned, sporting medallions made with the spirograph unit.

I hope to hear more from Robert about his explorations. I’ll continue to share them here.

The post Carving Spirograph Patterns into Wood with a Pin Router appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

This kit includes patterns for the shaped wheels that were selling with the newer sets on the market at the time (and are included in the new sets since 2013): the triangle, oval, cross and bar. I have made blog posts and videos about using most of these. See: Triangle wheel, Oval wheel here and here, Valentines with oval wheel, Bar wheel.

It also includes a few patterns using the mysterious Swing Marker which I wrote about here.

If you’re going to print these off, click on the images one at a time to get the highest-resolution version, and then send that to your printer. You will have to scale them down to get them to print on a single piece of letter-size or A4 paper. (Go to the printer dialog’s advanced settings and reduce the percentage until the preview shows that it fits.)

The post 1971 Spirograph Refill Kit No. 4211 appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

I had a basketball, which I set in a suitably sized (crystal!) bowl to hold it steady, and proceeded to attach a Wild Gears ring (84 teeth on the inside) with putty and drew a pattern (Wild Gear 36 teeth). And to my surprise, it worked quite nicely.

I wasn’t intending to do it more than once, so I made a video of the whole experiment, which is below.

My basketball will never be the same. I used a black Sakura Micron 05 pen, which is permanent, archival and waterproof. Although I used some Wild Gears, I think Spirograph parts should also work.

Now that I think about it, though, the guy who asked the question was a wood turner. A basketball is spherically symmetrical and convex, so this might work on the convex side of a shallow turned bowl, but drawing on the inside of the bowl probably wouldn’t work as the inside ring teeth would be off the surface. An epitrochoid (drawing on the outside of the ring) might be possible, however, on a concave surface.

I don’t see it working on a spindle shape with cylindrical symmetry.

Here’s the video. Let us know if you try anything like this.

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As well as the colour photos of the envelope, there was a 2-page sheet of instructions without images, “mystery patterns” that spirographers could try out. I’ve created a video exploring 4 of these 54 mystery patterns. If you’re not sure how to follow the instructions, you might like to watch it first.

The Refill Kit

To make the best print, click on the images one at a time to get the highest-resolution version, and then send that to your printer. (The full images are high resolution and may take a little time to download if you have a slow connection.)

Original post from 2019:

Thanks to Thomas Alan Blalock from my SpirographicArt Facebook Page for being the first to send pictures of the 1967 Spirograph Refill Kit.

The post 1967 Spirograph Refill Kit No. 402 appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

A good toy store may carry the new Spirograph sets made by Kahootz. You can also find them on Amazon. There are many different sets available now, so decide what you want.

All links are affiliate links, meaning I may get a small commission if you buy something.

The most complete set is the Super Spirograph.

There’s also the regular (non-super) Spirograph deluxe set:

Some of the new sets have come with artwork borrowed by the old sets from the 1970s. Don’t be fooled; these are newly manufactured.

Kahootz also uses words like “Original Spirograph” to describe its product. This isn’t wrong at all, as the design is more or less the same as those made in the 1970s. The pieces are compatible, and the sets are mostly the same.

But the new sets are newly manufactured in China, and the injection moulding processes and materials used are not quite as good as they were back in the day. The pieces bend a bit and they are built with less precision in hole placement. The old ones were made in the UK, Canada, the US and perhaps elsewhere (if you know, please tell me in the comments).

There are even cheaper knockoff versions findable online, often pared down to a small number of components. I have not tried any of these sets.

Buying vintage

Real vintage Spirograph sets are better quality. You can look for them on eBay and Etsy. They often have a few pieces missing.

If you don’t live in the US, use eBay for your country or a country near you and search for “vintage spirograph”. For example, if you live in Portugal, try eBay.es (the Spanish version). Today when I search Spanish eBay.es for “vintage spirograph”, I see several sets available, mostly from the UK, but a few from France or Germany. There are also spare parts available if you’re missing a few pieces.

Do not worry about the pens! The old pens will have dried out anyway, and they really weren’t very good. There are so many great pens available now that work much better than the old pens and come in more and better colours.

Do not worry about the pins or the pieces of corrugated cardboard that came with the old sets. They aren’t necessary. If you do want to use pins, you can cut up an old cardboard box, or even better, use a cork bulletin board. But you don’t have to use pins. You can get poster putty, which is exactly the same as the “Spiro Putty” sold with the new sets, for a dollar or two at any office supply store. Blu Tack works too.

If you really want to buy the right pins, look for “map pins“. They are short and stubby, and will hold the ring to the paper properly.

Do not worry about the paper! You can use any paper. I usually use cheap photocopy paper for playing around. But when I want to make something nice, I use fancy paper, card stock, or even watercolour paper that I’ve sponge-painted.

Buying Wild Gears

Wild Gears is a different product. I’ve written a lot about it on this website. It is not compatible with Spirograph. It is much more expensive too, as it is not mass produced. But it’s fantastic. To purchase, go to WildGears.com.

The post How to Buy a Spirograph Set appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

My favorite thing about this book is how it teaches you some basic principles about making Spirograph designs, then encourages you to improvise. Maybe, as it says, you can create a design that no one else has ever seen.

The writing style is relatively literary, compared to the minimalist writing found today. The booklet walks you through the different things you can do with one ring and one wheel, and takes you to the most difficult designs using two racks.

The older sets had one particular property that got lost sometime in sets made in the 1980s and later. The alignment mark was halfway up one side of the tooth. If you turned a wheel over and drew the same pattern again, it wouldn’t line up exactly. But this could be used to make a denser pattern. This feature is described in the booklet, and some designs are shown that use this technique.

This set also came with some sheets of paper that were divided in squares for drawing your nicest designs. The rings had lines that aligned with the squares, as you can see in the diagrams in the booklet. You could easily use them to make patterns with both rings, aligning them carefully with the squared paper.

Denys Fisher, by the way, was the inventor of Spirograph, and vintage UK sets carried his name. Sets made in the US and Canada did not, nor do the modern sets made by Kahootz Toys.

Thanks Ron, from all of us, for sending these photos and your observations!

Click on an image to see the slideshow of all the pages in the booklet.

The post Vintage Spirograph Booklet from 1968 appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

Are you missing a Spirograph wheel or gear? Did a key piece get broken? Did you buy an old second-hand set that’s short a few pieces? Are you wishing for more Super Spirograph parts to make different shapes?

Kahootz Toys, the makers of the new Spirograph, have set up a shop where you can order single Spirograph replacement parts.

Screenshot from Kahootz Toy’s former shop on Shopify, no longer operating.

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EDIT: Aug. 13: See the bottom of this post for an update!

I (re-)discovered spirograph the 25th of June this year when I bought the starter pack with one ring and six wheels. The set was exactly the price of a pack of cigarettes in the Netherlands. I gave up smoking that day, successfully, and am very much involved in spirograph.

I have meanwhile gathered a collection of spirograph sets with the money I would have otherwise spend on smoking. Amongst them one from 1972 with a swing arm. Regretfully without the instructions, and I am very curious on how to use that piece. I have to admit I can not figure it out myself.

My question would be if you can help me out, or otherwise ask the visitors of spirographicart to clarify the “mystery”.

The mystery piece, labelled “SWING MARKER”

Note that the mystery piece has no teeth!

The only clue I see is on the cover of the box. It says ‘New “swinging action” designs!’ next to an unusual pattern:

Obviously this is a piece that didn’t make it to the next edition of Spirograph. If anyone has a booklet for this set, or can imagine how to use the toothless mystery “swing marker” piece to produce the design above, please let us know in the comments!

Here are the box cover and the rest of the set.

Apparently Spirograph can help you give up smoking! Congratulations, Ron!

EDIT August 13:

After looking at a photo referenced from a comment below, I had a “Eureka” moment about how it works.  You don’t need a swing marker, folks, unless you want reproducible results and recipes to follow.  I’m more of a slap-dash experimenter, myself.

It’s all about drawing a pattern while the ring is attached with only one pin (can’t do this with putty) and swinging between stops you’ve set with other pins. Bizarre, yes.

Here are my initial experiments:

First try swinging spirograph.

Some totally different designs can be obtained.

Note that I’m using a corkboard here as a working surface to stick the pins in, as I described in one of my very first posts on this blog, before the new Spirograph or Wild Gears came out. I can imagine the pivot pin will wiggle itself out in time, probably more quickly if you’re using a corrugated cardboard backing.

Give it a try!

The post Vintage Spirograph Swing Marker Mystery appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

And we all know, here on SpirographicArt.com, that Spirograph is a Classic Toy. Nice to have the Royal Mail acknowledge it too.

Actually, they have every reason to be proud of it. Spirograph was developed and first marketed by a British engineer, Denys Fisher, and hit the stores in 1965. Kenner acquired the rights for the the American market and started distributing Spirograph in the USA in 1966.

The first patent on spirograph was, according to Wikipedia, registered by a Polish mathematician and inventor, Bruno Abakanowicz, but I have not seen any pictures of his invention. It may have been nothing like Denys Fisher’s plastic gears and wheels which we know and love.

You can purchase the stamp, along with those of the other Classic Toys, on the Royal Mail website here.

PS: Thanks to Jason from New Zealand for the heads-up about this stamp!

The post The Royal Mail Honours Spirograph with New Stamp appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

He applies his logical, problem solving mind to common pitfalls people run into, and comes up with creative solutions: where to keep your eyes, adding extra rings, using rare earth magnets rather than pins or putty, marking up your gears, and even cleaning up your mistakes!

A must-watch even for serious spirograph artists!

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