Sean,
Nicely done. Is the topper wood?
I need to do a behind the scenes video of my layout (I have a standard megatree with 32 strands of LED strings -- not smart this year) and only 10' tall (I live in a townhouse so anything larger would be overkill).
Definitely want to see videos of your show this year. I will be posting mine this weekend. I am working on a new website called GustafsonLights.com for my show.
Kurt
Yeah, the topper was two sheets of 1/2" plywood. I painted them with Kilz, then assembled them. I finally painted them with exterior house paint. 20 eye bolts , nuts on both sides went and covered about 190 degrees.
On the top of the tree i have two steel cables (dog run , plastic coated cables) that attach from the topper down to a 5/16 x 4" eye-bolt. These two cables counter the force of the 20 emt's. I was afraid i would break the flange. You can see the 3" flange i used to attach the 1" plywood disk in the below images
Here are some pics of the topper
First picture shows the 1" thick oak board that i put down the 3" pipe. The purpose of this is for the 3/4" pvc pipe attached to the star can fit into the hole in the center.
![](http://meighan.net/nutcracker/images/IMG_0118a.jpg)
Here shows how the star will fit into the topper. Note: I have not yet glued the front coro onto the star. You can see the sides are 1" high , instead of the original 3".
![](http://meighan.net/nutcracker/images/IMG_0115a.jpg)
and here you can see i painted the tops of teh 20 eye-bolts yellow. This helps me see them when i am holding teh emt and trying to attach the hooks into them.
Note the entire weight of the tree would be supported by the plastic flange. Worried of the stress of this force, i have two eyebolts on the back that will counter this force.
so far, nothing has broken.
![](http://meighan.net/nutcracker/images/IMG_0116a.jpg)