December 25, 2025
We got some interesting presents. . .
Katie and Matt got us the Tesla Coil and the Noble Gases.
Eileen’s puzzle box after Martin solved it. One extra tricky bit is the locking mechanism on the bottom of the pull out box at the left. That you have to line up by using gravity to get it into the configuration shown. The only clue is that when its oriented correctly, the writing on the back of the outer, green box is right side up.
The two side star knobs have to set with the locking bars in the orientation shown. You have to know an old safe picker’s trick and pull up on the inner box a bit so that you can feel them slide into the cut out parts of the circle in the inner box, you can see that in the left picture. If that wasn’t enough, it turns out that the star knob in the center of the top of the inner box doesn’t do anything!
The very start of the Praying Mantis build. Yikes! there are a lot of parts!
The first subassembly laid out.
And assembled on top of its instruction picture.