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The top half of the tree after stacking and gluing all the pieces together. I used plain old Elmer's white glue, which worked quite well. The only problem was that when I pushed the top-most layer down to make a good bond, the bottom layers would start sliding out of place - even when I assembled them in a corner I made with two pieces of plywood (see the next picture). To fix this I started putting a few dabs of hot glue in addition to the white glue. The hot glue dried almost instantly and held the pieces in place while the white glue set up. I would have used hot glue for everything but it took too long to squeeze out enough hot glue for the entire piece. By the time I was finished applying the hot glue for an entire piece, the glue I had put on first had already cooled.