I stumbled upon this research paper called PVC polyhedra:

We describe how to construct a dodecahedron, tetrahedron, cube, and octahedron out of pvc pipes using standard fittings.
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In particular, if we take a connector that takes three pipes each at 120 degree angles from the others (this is called a “true wye”) and we take elbows of the appropriate angle, we can make the edges come together below the center at exactly the correct angles.

A pivotal moment: What you consider tinkering is actually research-paper-worthy science. Here are some images from the Chief Engineer’s workbench.

The supporting construction of our heat exchangers are built from standard parts connected at various angles:

The final result can be a cuboid for holding meandering tubes:

… or cascaded prisms with n-gon basis – for holding spirals of flexible tubes:

The implementation of this design is documented here (a German post whose charm would be lost in translation unless I wanted to create Internet Poetry).

But I also started up my time machine – in order to find traces of my polyhedra research in the early 1980s. From photos and drawings of the three-dimensional crystals in mineralogy books I figured out how to draw two-dimensional maps of maximally connected surface areas. I cut out the map, and glued together the remaining free edges. Today I would be made redundant by Origami AI.

I filled several shelves with polyhedra of increasing number of faces, starting with a tetrahedron and culminating with this rhombicosidodecahedron. If I recall correctly, I cheated a bit with this one and created some of the pyramids as completely separate items.

I think this was a rather standard hobby for the typical nerdy child, among things like growing crystals from solutions of toxic chemicals, building a makeshift rotatable telescope tripod from scraps, or verifying the laws of optics using prisms and lenses from ancient dismantled devices.

The actually interesting thing is that this photo is the only trace of any of these hobbies. In many years after creating this stuff – and destroying it again – I never thought about documenting it. Until today. It seems we weren’t into sharing these days.