Nativity Disaster: 3-D Jigsaw Puzzles

Sooner or later it had to happen. Our fancy Lenox nativity set (see last year's post) was heavily damaged when a display case fell off the wall onto the set. I should have taken a picture of the scene, but I was too concentrated on cleaning it up to pull out a camera.

Fortunately, the Holy Family survived. Most of the other pieces lost hands, heads, and wings.

Over a few days, I was able to glue together many of the pieces. Angels and animals took the biggest hit. Our son, John, was visiting and proved to be excellent at 3-D puzzle solving.

First, one of the success stories:

Most of the angels merely lost their wings, which stayed mostly intact and were easy to re-attach.

The glue line is basically invisible on this wing.

This hand had also broken off.

Now for not-so-good results:

This angel had shattered into many small pieces. From a distance, it might look OK, but close up there's a lot of small shards and pieces missing.

The camel is one of my favorite pieces. From this side it doesn't look too bad.

But the other side shows that I'm not great at getting pieces to fit together exactly. Clearly I'm not ready to become an archaeologist!

Like the camel, the donkey (another of my favorites) looks OK from this side.

Even the back side doesn't look too bad. The big piece in the left front belongs in his belly, but I just couldn't maneuver it into place.

This is the remainder of the largest pieces. Many smaller ones were practically dust and had to be discarded.

I packed up the set and will use it when I can find a safer display space!