Fascinations Metal Earth 3D Laser Cut Model - San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge in Gold - Rare Earth Edition

I bought this as a souvenir for San Fran trip because local shops there did not have any attractive, inexpensive souvenir Golden Gate bridges for sale. They had pencil sharpeners and the like. Assembly took about an hour. Comes in a small flat cardboard package, all metal pieces cut out of a 6" flat, flexible, metal square. Right from the get go, it's a challenge for your fine motor skills and your patience. It is fragile - just removing pieces from the frame requires caution to avoid damage. During assembly, pieces are held together with tiny (about 1 mm) tabs that meet slots on their attaching piece. Everything lines up perfectly. Once through the slot, the tabs are either bent 90 degrees or twisted 90 degrees to secure the pieces. Built model is a beauty, measuring 1 3/4 " tall, about 6" long, and 1/4" wide. It seems true to scale. Attracts attention when displayed. Very little, if any, room for mistakes because untwisting or bending back a tab may cause it to break off.Tools: Must have needle nose pliers (small size).

This fun model from Metal Earth is a great thing to do if you have some experience with models like it. It can be a bit tricky at some parts, but If you just use your patience, you will get it done. It took me about 45 minutes to complete, and it is pretty small, but it looks great! It's also a great activity for a lazy or rainy day. This is not recommended for the younger-age, as there are small parts, and tricky pieces to work with. Also, you will need Small needle-nose pliers, flat or pointed tweezers, and clippers to remove the pieces from the sheet without damaging them.

Bought this for my 10 year old daughter as a stocking stuffer at Christmas. Delivery was fine, product looked pretty, but it was clearly designed to be assembled by a team of surgeons using an electron microscope. After 15 minutes of diligent combined effort (punctuated by the shedding of tears and gnashing of teeth), we reclaimed our sanity by throwing this devil's plaything in the recycling bin. We had even bought one for my daughter's friend as a "gift"; I only hope the friendship is salvageable.

I love building these models! This was one of the first ones I built and it is much simpler than most. If you are first starting off you are going to find this difficult, because the pieces are so small and I needed tools to make mine. I use mini needle nose pliers, side cutters, and round nose pliers. Also these models don't come with written instructions, just a big piece of paper with the part on it in sections being put together. So that is another challenge because you have to figure out how to assemble it just by the picture! I love these projects though because it is a challenge and it to me is relaxing!

The kit is exactly as shown in the pictures. The golden finish looks great! This was my first time making a model so it took me time and patience to build it.

The item was extremely difficult to assemble - in fact impossible for me. Even removing the parts from the frame without bending them was very hard to do. No doubt there are folks with much better skills for this than I have, but it gets a "very hard to assemble" rating from me.

Beautiful model. Took a half hour to put together. Instructions are mediocre. I've done a handful of these models and learned to follow my intuitions regarding reading the instructions. You'll need more precise tools than needle nose pliers to put this together and not bend everything.I'd recommend connecting the towers to the suspension first as opposed to attaching them to the deck as in the instructions, makes things 100x more easier. Make sure you have the etched tower side facing outwards.Would have been 5 stars if it was not for the lack of clear instructions.

The gold color is beautiful, especially for the GOLDEN Gate bridge.After putting together a couple of the very difficult Star Wars models, this model was a piece of cake.If you've put together these types of models before, you know that some tabs are to be twisted and others to be bent up or down. For most of the tabs that needed to be bent there just didn't seem to be an easy way to do it for the locations where they were. I ended up twisting them instead, and it's hard to tell the difference unless you look very closely. I also found that a very small drop of super-glue helped hold a few tabs that seemed overly loose.