r/romandodecahedron

Yes, almost everyone in the subreddit is familiar with this theory. In a nutshell, fabricating this complicated shape could have served as a test of skill portfolio piece for metalworkers, or was perhaps a required part of some apprenticeship.

I do some dodecahedron searches from time to time, and came across this 2013 post from "Atomic Shrimp" on his own website. Some of you may be familiar with his eclectic YouTube channel. In his post, he documents his own attempt to make roman dodecahedron in pewter, using lost wax casting. Although it was only his first attempt, his results were far from perfect.

https://atomicshrimp.com/post/2013/03/03/Making-A-Replica-Roman-Dodecahedron

Seeing his imperfect cast, and the steps required to make the wax pattern, it occurred to me that there would be one way to assess the test of skill theory: compare the relative casting quality of every complete roman dodecahedron to other known copper alloy castings of the time. Maybe they needed to be perfect to pass the apprenticeship or what have you. This shape is obviously difficult to form a wax pattern for. Furthermore, the thin walls with circular cuts may easily lead to "cold shuts", and the protrusions may easily fail to fully fill with metal or trap bubbles. Avoiding these pitfalls completely may have been quite difficult. How many casts would have really came out perfectly the first time, especially considering that these don't appear to have been mass produced? For every proposed practical use, would a small flaw really have been important enough to justify melting down an imperfect dodecahedron?

Have we ever found a complete roman dodecahedron with any substantial casting defect? Was it common for contemporary copper alloy objects to have small flaws, or do the hard to fabricate dodecahedrons look suspiciously perfect by comparison? Was this shape just the perfect balance between something that was easy enough to describe geometrically, while being quite difficult to fabricate perfectly?