The other day my husband and I were at the mall for a movie and before the movie we stopped in this crazy store here in Japan called Village Vanguard. The store is rather similar to Spencer's back in the states with all the random fictional characters all over the walls and cluttered display racks. After navigating through the tightly spaced aisles we stumbled upon the nano puzzles...
If you have never seen a nano puzzle they are essentially small three dimensional models usually of famous architecture but this time they had none other than Star Wars puzzles. I really wanted to get the Death Star but I hesitated and decided not to buy any of them. I went back and forth of whether I wanted to try to put one together, once complete these puzzles are really something else. But to put them together is a pretty tedisome task.
So after much debate I decided I needed to stop by the store and see if they still had any Death Stars left, unfortunately they only had the Millennium Falcon and R2-D2 so I went with R2-D2 after all that little droid can take a lot. First things first I grabbed some tools which are actually for my jewelry making since they are much smaller for a wire cutter and pliers, a crochet hook (smallest I had on hand), and two pairs of tweezers one that has a really sharp edge. I even had to get a nail since the crochet hook was a bit too big for some on the smaller spot where the piece has to be rolled into a cylinder shape.
Yes the instructions are in Japanese but I only use the pictures to piece it all together so no worries on the language barrier. Also most of the puzzle pieces are not even a quarter of an inch in size so it helps to have nimble fingers or very tough finger nails. The finger nails come into play with the little tabs on each piece to bend into one another to secure the pieces together but if you are like me and your nails are anything but strong I would recommend using the tweezers to bend and twist those tabs. Use the wire cutters to remove each piece from the panel to provide a smoother edge and a nicer finished look. As for the pliers I use those to aide in bending pieces into shape.
This puzzle was easier considering how delicate each piece is, but to be honest even though it's a pain in the butt to put together it really is cool. I am happy to say I only had one piece break which is saying something, when my husband put together one of the Japanese castle puzzles he broke a couple of pieces. The piece I broke was part of the left foot and I was able to prop it up with another piece and aided in securing it with other pieces once they were set. I love the amount of detail put into these puzzles, from the tiny fans to the bolts. Overall this puzzle only took about an hour and a half to finish which isn't too bad the castle took my husband almost a week since it was too frustrating for him (the poor guy kept breaking pieces). I guess is shows which one of us has more patience for these sort of things.