Hi all,

When I have time it's been fun making some toys and cool displays just to show off what the laser can do (beyond the obvious commercial applications). But, I have found many of the patterns pretty frustrating when it comes time to figure out how to put them together since most have no instructions, and even the commercially sold ones are very weak in terms of "how to" assistance.

A few days ago I downloaded the Eiffel Tower pattern after being inspired by a previous thread to try and make my own. Now that it's done, I figured it's high time I start contributing more to the forum, so I put together a little photo tutorial to share with everyone since a lot of folks seem interested in doing this...

You van find the complete tutorial on-line at: http://gallery.me.com/erik.king#100190

Here are a few additional tips to go with the pix and captions:

1) The pattern (as downloaded from the Creek) has a bunch of extra parts in it. All you need is what is shown in the first several pix - so you may want to eliminate the spares.

2) The pattern is set up to engrave the squares on the "floors", but on mine I cut them instead as I liked keeping the airy look for everything.

3) I have had good luck using plain out white school glue (Elmers type) as it is easy to apply and dries clear. I recommend applying liberal amounts and smearing it around the joined areas to penetrate and seal all the openings and get a good bond. This makes the finished piece a lot stronger.

4) I find blue tape to be essential to hold things together while building as this glue takes awhile to set.

5) If you keep a wet rag in your work area it's easy to cure the "sticky fingers" syndrome and wipe up random glue drips.

6) The easiest place to go wrong with assembly is to not notice that each of the 4 sides (at each of the three levels) needs to be put together so that the tabs alternate around the corners of the four sides (go tab, blank, tab, blank -not- tab, tab, blank) because they will fit fine at the sides if done backwards - but than the floor will not fit on top.

This is actually a pretty simple project and I agree that it generates a "wow" factor. Everyone who sees it is impressed!

Have fun (and a Happy Thanksgiving)!