While most people prefer to park their car on the street in favor of using their garage as a workshop or walk-in utility closet, stuntman and woodworker Ben Tardif had other plans: he converted his entire garage into a giant marble rollercoaster.
Called Marble Mountain, the ‘still under construction’ marble machine consists of 25 sections that mesh together to form one large kinetic sculpture that requires a minimum of 250 marbles at a time just to run properly. Similar to quirky hole designs on a mini-golf course, each of the 25 sections has a theme that plays into how the marble interacts with that particular section; it jumps at the ski jump and rides the skateboarding halfpipe, for example.
Says Tardif:
“Every element is themed (or will be upon completion) to an aspect of my life or to something that I find interesting. Some of the elements include a roller coaster, ski jump, Times Square, Lombard Street, and a skatepark. It took 3 years to get to this point of being able to turn it on and watch it go, and I will continue to work on it and get it fully completed.”
Tardif’s Marble Mountain Facts:
- It has a footprint of 12′ x 8′ and stands 8′ tall
- The material of the tracks and supports consist almost entirely of wood
- Everything is custom-made from materials bought mostly from craft and hardware stores (mainly Michaels and Home Depot)
- The lift is 11 feet long, holds 90 marbles at once, and rotates at 1 revolution per second (60 RPM)
- It takes at least 250 marbles to keep it running without delay, but looks better with 300
- There are 32 possible paths for the marbles
- There are 14 rockers that distribute the marbles onto the different paths
- The first year and a half of construction happened in my apartment before moving to a small warehouse
- The original design was smaller and not as cool, so a redesign took place making it much bigger and morphed into a half-conical shape with the lift right down the middle
- I do know how much it cost to make thus far but even my finaceé doesn’t know that number
- It takes just under an hour to set up or tear down Marble Mountain
- Since it is modular, I could remove a section and rebuild it as something else as long as the tracks matched up with the other pieces
Frankly, I don’t know if I can come up with any reasons why not to build a Marble Mountain in one’s garage. For those who want to learn more about the build process, Tardif has documented the build on Instagram under the #marblemountainproject hashtag.
