Secrect Garden

My son & I put this together in 1 afternoon. Good project to do with your kiddo. Would use needle nose pliers or tweezers to help. Our fingers were sore half way through bc some of the parts are small & you have to push them in tight spots. But once we were done it was gorgeous, plays well, & he was thrilled.

finished off the collection of five music boxes. came right on time!

Gears on sides were difficult to line up. Had to take apart a couple of times. Needs lots of wax! The foam pads and double side tape did not stick at all. Do love the look of the box.

ROKR is a very reputable manufacturer of these types of kits. It comes with picture instructions but no words, since it is sold around the world. You will need some mechanical aptitude to understand the diagrams, but some help from an adult will help you. The ORDER of assembly is very important. If you miss a step, you will be taking it back apart. Every thing fits together perfectly, which is amazing. No glue needed. Be careful taking the parts out of the sheets, since some are quite thin and fragile.Pay attention to where you are to sand or wax. These are not that well explained in the pictures.We did have some problems with getting all the parts to rotate with the music box. Don't give up. Just keep adjusting. This is probably the only real troublesome part.Overall, we love it

I hate to say this, and I HATE leaving negative reviews of products. I wanted to like this so much. I got two of these products as Christmas presents for my kids (the mechanical music box and the solar system one). So I spent almost all of Christmas day trying to build the jewelry box with my daughter (and later, by myself). We usually love building things. We're a big LEGO family. But this thing is just too delicate and too flimsy to work. It's all made of balsa wood, and half the pieces break as you're trying to pop them out of the premade molds. Basically, the problem is simply that every step relies on a teensy tiny piece of wood--like, half the size of an ant--nesting perfectly, or in some cases wedging perfectly, into another piece of wood. And they just don't fit that well. Even with sanding and waxing, the pieces often just don't fit into each other. And then you try to force them, and they break. At one point, I literally gave up on the "screws" (read: pieces of wood less than a millimeter wide) and just super-glued pieces together. There's a whole spring mechanism in the middle that's really hard to work around, too. I worked on it for hours, gave up several times, finally finished it, and--surprise, surprise--it doesn't work (the music won't play and gears won't turn). I just don't have it in me to take it apart and try to find the problem. I wish it had just had less pieces, a couple more "real" screws, and, well, I just wish it had worked. Sorry to be a bummer. But I do NOT recommend these things.

Don't give this to a child. And don't give this to someone that has no patience and is not up to a challenge. It is not super hard, but it does take some concentration and care. The quality is very good. Great attention was taken in the scoring for the pieces. Just realize that small skinny parts are going to take careful removal. If you don't, then i hope you have a lot of superglue and toothpicks to apply it with. This is not a plastic bendable injection mold item.If you do it slowly and properly, you will absolutely love the results!

I had really high hopes for this beautiful music box! I really enjoy putting things together and these wooden puzzles have really taken my interest. I thought it was even neater to have a puzzle that functioned once it was completed. To be honest, I never even got completely to the end before tossing it, because the pieces just did not move properly together. I waxed everywhere it told me too, and still it wasn't enough. The craftmanship of the pieces are beautifully done, but certain pieces wanted to keep snapping in half. I put this thing together and took it apart and put it back together more times than should be necessary, and still the cogs would not move cohesively. I really wish I could give this a better rating, because it really is gorgeous, but it didn't function the way it was designed to, and that was half the reason I bought it.

This is a beautiful box, but will not work as designed. It's not because of too little waxing. It's because the big gear cannot turn 6 small gears -- impossible. I took 4 of the gears off, and after lots of trial and error, I got 2 to work. But even with 2 working, the gears have to be checked on every step or you'll get to the end and they don't work. And I should know -- I've built 4 of these just because I like the box! Same problem with all 4.