Being a member of BeLUG I try every now and then to participate in a club-event. I always have my sliding puzzles to show, but I also try to come up with something new every time.

LEGO blind building has been done before -I read about it on TechnicBRICKs blog-, but I changed a few things: it wasn't a contest (I was the only one doing it) and the building instructions were NOT used.
I got my very first LEGO Technic set 854 in 1978 and I can remember that I built the model just once with the building instructions. I've never used the building instructions ever since, so building it now without the instructions wouldn't be the hardest part...
The only thing I did was sorting the bricks by colour so that it wouldn't take too long for me to find a specific brick.
On Saturday it took me about one hour and a half to complete the model without any problems (unless you call attaching a 4L axle not to the center of 24-tooth gears a problem). The first build on Sunday didn't cause any problem either. But the second time I built it on Sunday someone noticed I used a blue 1x4 plate instead of a black one (maybe I was getting a little bit tired?): because I used the original bricks I couldn't get them apart again without watching. I hope not too many people noticed this small mistake...