Section "B" Complete! - 2 of 8 sections done.

Well, we finally found enough time to get the 2nd section completed.  It's been sitting on the table, 99% complete, for almost 4 months waiting for me to finally fix the white border part to connect this section with the previous one.  Since this was the second section we were able to start using one of the best assembly techniques for these types of puzzles. That is building one section on top of another completed section.  Each section is a duplicate of the others with regard to the pieces.  So, when you build on top you can tell exactly the shape of the piece you are looking for.  When you couple this with a sorting process that sorts all the pieces by shape it makes finding the pieces very easy!  The pictures below illustrate these techniques. Look closely and you will see one section being built on top of the previous.

Section C is done.  We are doing B (to the left).

See how we built the yellow man right on top of the other section using the bottom piece shapes as a guide.

Look very closely and you will see the parts of the B section being built on top of the C section.

Sorting the pieces by shape is key.

More sorting.  Notice the two groups at the bottom.  They are the same shape but we found that you can divide them into those that run vertically or horizontally in the puzzle.  The ones that the bottom are slightly longer and narrower.

Just needs the white border to be completed.  This is basically where it sat for 4 months!!

Finally found the time to get it done.

Since our busy time of year is over we are now back in full puzzle mode.  This means that we will be working on completing the puzzle soon.  My goal is to try to have it finished by the end of June.  I guess we'll find out soon enough.