Burning the Midnight Oil

I worked hard last night to finish up the Trionfo degli Asburgo 8000pc from Educa. It is super hard, but what the heck, you only live once. It took until 3am to finish assembly and another half an hour just to get all the sections together!

I am really glad this one is done, it is not my favorite puzzle! I don't recommend this puzzle because of the poor image quality (its blurry AND the color fidelity leaves a lot to be desired). I guess it worked out that it showed up 75% completed! I don't know that I could have done all 8000 pieces! This puzzle was hard because of the poor image.

Only 350-400 more pieces to go!

Assembly complete

Final Assembly

Complete! I had to rebuild the puzzle table in order to fit this beast. I will now adorn the underside of the table so when it is retracted, you can view the puzzle!

Detail #1

Detail #2

Detail #3

Detail #4

Detail #5

Detail #6

Detail #7

Detail #8

Detail #9

The Mighty Machu Picchu Crumbles

Boom! Done. This puzzle was very hard in the solidish color areas. There are only two shapes (standard 2 knob, 2 receptacle pieces in horizontal and vertical orientation) which makes the puzzle difficult. The pieces will readily interchange and I found myself back tracking to find my mistake at least a dozen times.

The grass section did not offer too much of a difficulty. Overall, I will have to rate this an 8 (A 10 would be 5000+ version of a Paitnik solid black with gloss finish).

Time to get back to Life!

Update: When going back to life, the pieces now feel like oversized kid puzzle pieces and it feels sooooo much easier to do! I highly recommend this puzzle now as a trainer. You have to look for minute details and it helps train your brain. Think of it as puzzle push ups!!

This 500 Piece puzzle is pretty damn difficult. Rub your eyeballs and get ready for some tedious puzzling.

Julian Askins: Lake Side View, 750pc Completed

Today I finished the Julian Askins 750pc Lake Side View puzzle that has been sitting around the house for a while. Everyone and their brother has worked on it and we knew it was missing pieces. Well today we found it is missing three pieces. This puzzle was shipped down from Michigan and was crushed inside the larger box and our neighbor actually found a piece or two in the street and figured they had to be ours.

So, I think I will try my puzzle piece repair technique I thought up when we thought we were missing pieces for Rizzy. I will let you know how it goes!

When I started today, the sky and water was not done, I always try and do the hard parts for M so she can enjoy the puzzle more. She however, was too hung over all day from the Sangria I made last night for Tessa's birthday party to puzzle at all so I just went ahead and finished it.

Julian Askins' Lake Side View Finished but not complete. As you can see, its missing three pieces, strangely enough, they are all in the same row. How will the fixing go? Stay tuned.

Puzzle Craziness

Well, we have completed two puzzle, found 4 more at the thrift store, decide to start on the 18,000 pcs 4 Historical World Maps by Ravensburger and one a bid from ebay Germany on the 9000 piece Tower of Babel  since the last post! It's getting crazy around here!

It took me about 5 hours to sort the first bag of world maps today. I think the pervious owner started on this hardest one! This puzzle is going to be extremely hard.

Power outage? No reason to stop puzzling! Thats why we have headlamps! M puzzling Maui Moon in the dark!

Getting started on 4 World Maps. This might be missing pieces. We bought it used off of craigslist and this section was opened. I feel confident I can make a missing piece if need be. It took about 5 hours to sort this thing.

M and Tessa working on a puzzle.

Completed:

Maui Moon Bay - 500pc, Master Pieces
Purchased at K-Mart in Plymouth, MI  on 3/26/2010 for $8.00

Started: 5/8/2013
Finished: 5/10/2013
Assembled by: Tom, Mercedes and Tessa

Aimee Stewart: The Dreaming Tree - 750pc, Mega Puzzles Reflections
K-Mart in Plymouth, MI 3/26/2013 $8.00

Started: 5/9/2013
Completed: 5/10/2013
Assembled By: Tom, Mercedes and Tessa

Acquired:

John O'Brian: Gallerie de Montmarte - 1500pc,  Jumbo
Purchased from Human Society St. Thomas for $2.00 on 5/11/2013

M.C. Esher: Hand with Reflecting - 1000pc, Pomegranate Art Piece Puzzle
Purchased from Human Society St. Thomas for $2.00 on 5/11/2013

Giovanni Paolo Pannini: Picture Gallery with View of Modern Rome - 1000pc, Pomegranate Art Piece Puzzle
Purchased from Human Society St. Thomas for $2.00 on 5/11/2013

Colorful Candies - 1000pc, Springbok
Purchased from Human Society St. Thomas for $2.00 on 5/11/2013

Effervesently Yours - A quick snack

While I was waiting for M so we could finish Rizzi yesterday, I fired up the Effervescently Yours puzzle (The one showing the Perrier bottle) that she picked up from the Thrift store. It is a springbox puzzle from 70s or 80s and it was a joy to put together! I was worried with all of the black pieces, but the Springbox cutting technique results in pieces with clear shape differentiation and I was able to assemble the entire puzzle without a mistake! I am glad to report that our perfect record at getting puzzles from thrift stores that have all the pieces has gone untarnished!

I really enjoy these Springbox puzzles and puzzles in general with the funky shapes that dont follow the grid patters of cutting. It makes for interesting puzzling! I just wish they would all go back to including a signature piece.

Without further delay: Effervescently Yours!

Effervescently Yours - 500pc, Springbok (Out of Print)
Thrift Store - Livonia, MI $2.00 2/12/2013
Started: 5/7/2013
Completed: 5/7/2013
Builders: Tom
Notes: Love the unique pieces and how tight they fit together. I picked up the puzzle by the edge and shook it to show  M how tight it was!!!

Rizzi Finished!

Today we finished up James Rizzi's Nothing is as Pretty as  a Rizzi City! We laid our puzzle piece tattoo piece in around 6pm today! So far, this is the largest puzzle we have completed together! It took us 19 days from start to finish.

We however, realized the fear that indeed, a piece was missing! We also learned that Ravensburger does not have a missing piece replacement program for puzzles 5000 pieces and under.

The Missing Piece... A very sad day!

I found a funny link while looking for techniques on how to make a puzzle piece, turns it took this guy 8 years to do a 5000 piece puzzle and he found he too was missing just one piece! I hope he gets it fixed!


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1278837/Jack-Harris-spends-7-years-doing-5-000-piece-jigsaw-finds-ONE-bit-missing.html


For now, I am going to try my hand at making a replacement piece... we will see how it goes, if it doesn't work out, then I will have to go to the doc! I am going to try and fix it using a printer, and wood epoxy like quick wood. I am going to first try and print the missing piece using a scanner and photoshop. Once I print the piece, I will place the surrounding pieces face down and lay in the new piece image, fill the whole with the epoxy, and then level it off with the surrounding pieces and let it dry. Wish me luck!

UDPATE: WE FOUND THE PIECE! Here is the completed puzzle!

Cocktails complete

I finished cocktails today. The girls completed the drinks while I did the border and the solid black pieces. It took me three times longer to do black than it took them to do the entire rest of the puzzle. It was super frustrating and prone to fitting pieces that dont belong. On several occasions I had to back track and pull up a series of black piece that fit their neighbors and try again after brute forcing (trying every piece) yielded no results in a fit. This is not fun puzzling in my opinion.

With this puzzle, we are starting our new mounting technique. We have put contact paper on the back and we are waiting to get foam board to glue it to. We need to borrow a truck or get a taxi in order to get the sheets home. I dont like the method of nailing between the pieces to attach a puzzle to the wall. You would not nail a painting you just finished to the wall, and neither will I nail another puzzle.

Cocktails - 1000pc Paitnik
Started: 4/12/2013
Built by: Tom, Mercedes, Tessa
Completed 4/17/2013 in St. Thomas

Happy Sisters

Now that is a couple of happy sisters!

M and her sis finished Sour Gummies