Ordered some stuff from Jameco to finish my projects

I couldn't sleep and noticed that the full moon outside my window was lighting
up the clouds over downtown Juneau in a cool way so I took a few pics.

Haven't been sleeping all that much the last few nights, so I started doing a lot of reading on LED cubes and looking at what's needed to finish my current one.  I finally think I ordered everything needed to finish my little 3x3x3 LED cube and build a simple 4x4x4 cube much easier for a friend, at this point my soldering skills are whats holding me back more than anything.  With each project I've worked on I'm definitely improving by leaps and bounds in the soldering department.

With the parts ordered I can finish my 3x3x3 LED cube that is basically a proof of concept and allow me to work out a few of the kinks as far as getting a perfect grid of LED's which now I'm leaning toward reading through the comments on Instructables a user mstoetz1 had a good suggestion on the message boards about getting a better grid for the LED cubes.  While using the drilled board is perfect for getting the spacing to keep it looking tight you need to do a little work on all your LED's first like this...

Create a grid with solid core wire first to help keep the grid tight.

By curling the leads of the LED like this it makes the soldering
much easier since you just slide the solid core wire through it.

I'm trying to finish my 3x3x3 LED cube now, and a friend wants me to do a 4x4x4 LED cube for him, but ideally I want to get up to an 8x8x8 LED cube, but my soldering skills are gonna have raise to some kind of ninja master before I take on 1024 solder points.  I'm hoping using the pics above I'll be able to make the 4x4x4 LED much easier than the 3x3x3 where I'm soldering the legs together without any wire.  Well at least all this electronics stuff will help keep my mind distracted for a while. 

3x3x3 = 27 LED's X 2 =  54 solder points

4x4x4 = 64 LED's X 2 = 128 solder points

5x5x5 =125 LED's X 2 = 250 solder points

8x8x8 =512 LED's X 2 =1024 solder points