A week for fine wood!

Oskar's Matchboxes as it arrived chez moi

Eric Fuller heard via my Facebook page that I had missed out on getting a copy of Oskar's matchboxes from his recent update because I had to sit down to dinner with the present Mrs S. I didn't dare delay sitting down to place an order on pain of death and dismemberment and by the time I had eaten and cleaned up all of them had sold. Apparently someone wasn't happy for some reason and decided to return their copy to Eric. After he received it and checked it out, he contacted me to see whether I was still interested. Silly question really - PayPal occurred and this beauty arrived earlier this week.

I'm a sucker for gorgeous wood!

The boxes are made from Zebrawood, Purpleheart, Wenge, Lacewood and Mahogany with Maple interiors. The workmanship that has gone into these is simply superb! They are smooth as butter during assembly. They are all supposed to fit together with each interior covered up completely. Eric's page said it was sent out fully assembled but mine arrived like this - so either customs checked it or Eric played a joke on me! It took me quite some considerable time to assemble it correctly and even now it takes me 10-20 minutes to work it out.

Phew! That was tough!

I have waited more than 2 years for the next puzzle to arrive. Allard described a burr set that he had acquired back in October 2012. It was the 42 piece level 5 set made in miniature by Jack Krijnen (Allard's post is here). Unfortunately I just got my request in for one of these sets after Jack sold out. I left him with a request that if he ever made more then to let me know. I was pleased to receive an email from him recently and  he has produced another different set. This is the "Ultimate burr set", consisting of 27 burr sticks (again in miniature) with sheets detailing 637 different challenges going from level 1 up to level 8. I jumped at the chance:

Mahogany box with Maple inlay

Beautiful Box with 27 tiny burr pieces

The burr pieces are so tiny that Jack has made a pair of tweezers to assist with lifting them out! I am seriously struggling with these puzzles - I have very little experience assembling burrs from scratch and it is taking me quite a lot of thought and time. The whole box is 11.5 x 6 x 5 cm and the pieces are 0.9 x 0.9 x 3.6 cm making it very cute and very portable.

Puzzle number 008 solved