1. Look at surplus optical benches and components and various surplus sites. 

2. Searching the internet, finding LEGO optical components blogs and posts. 

3. Bought a batch of used LEGO's and 10"x10" base plates on ebay.

4. Visited a local surplus store, Axman, and found a red laser pointer, and some concave lenses and various foam pads. 

5. Play with various configurations to mount the laser. 

6. Disassembled the laser to be able to adjust the lens. 

6. Buy two dental mirrors from the dollar store.  Find a used CD case in the house. 

7. Build up an optical set up using the laser, the dollar store mirrors and the CD case beam splitter. 

8. This first build was not stable and had lots of defects from the CD beam splitter and unstable table. 

9. Buy 6, 12"x24" ceramic tiles from the hardware store. 

10. Glued to 10"x10" base plates to the a 12"x24" ceramic tile using Loctite construction glue.   The glue was thick, hard to spread, and did not make full contact over the tile, so I filled in the gaps with cyanoacrylate. 

11. Ultimately, the baseplates appeared to the uniformly adhered to the tiles.   

12. Stacked 3 tiles with foam and rubber bumpers to create the base optical bench. 

Progress so far, pictures to follow.