Day 7 - Completed!

We actually finished this on Wednesday 19 November but I have been a bit tardy in writing it up. Here are the finished pics. My assistant is happy that the ordeal is over but not too chuffed that the spaceship doesn't actually fly - I did warn him. The pictures don't really convey the full weight of the lego used in the model, it is pretty impressive.

Day 6 - Stung into action

Stung by some fierce e-mail criticism re: lack of progress I give my assistant a severe dressing down. Post-tears, I hope you all feel guilty now, you know who you are, we get stuck in and the top surface starts to take real shape.




(5 hours)

Day 5 - Underside completed

All the under side panels are done and in place plus some front detail parts. This took around 2 hours to complete. My assistant frequently complains that "this spaceship is taking a long time to make" and is now a rare sight at construction sessions - I think he is losing interest (?)

Day 4 - The shape of things to come

Really starting to take its distinctive shape shape now, we have built the two front-most sections in outline and the underpanel of one of them. The underpanels fit into the main frame with a very clever interconnection which must have taken the designers ages to come up with. According to the manual we are just about under half way through now.

(2 hours)

Day 3 - Progression Sessions

Quite a bit of progress made with the assistance of the missus. Two rear cargo structures, the engine assembly and one side were completed. The seven legs snapped in easily. Progress is swifter now that most of the parts are out of bags and also because the construction has sucked up around 5 or 6 hundred pieces so far. Note Sam's smart new haircut.





(4 hours)

Day 2 - Seven Legs

Still over half the pieces need to be sorted, but I get impatient and start to build again. This has a stop-start effect as some parts are readily to hand whilst other bits require lengthy bag searches. Even when sorted there are so many piles around the study it becomes an exercise in memory retention to re-find a pile of parts. I still can't face building the comprehensive super-structure so pick the 7 landing legs to make. This turns out to be a mistake as they are fiddly and complex constructions. Progress not helped by my assistant continually breaking the radar assembly from yesterday and insisting I fix it again and again. I have reconstructed the radar assembly about 30 to 40 times now. 2 hours (!) later and the 7 landing legs are done (almost; one is missing a part)...

It's no good, I'll have to take on the main structure. Actually this turns out to work pretty well and has the effect of getting some large pieces out of the piles and into something coherent. It is incredibly complex for a Lego kit and very cleverly designed, although I'm pretty sure that none of this section will be visible when it's finished. It's interesting from a structural engineering point of view but I begin to feel like the kind of nerd who pores over the blueprints of the Starship Enterprise. (b.t.w. must remember Star Trek is as real as Star Wars...)

(approx 5 hours today)

Day 1 - Sort you must

OK, OK I give in. At this rate we will never finish. I now sort Lego parts for the best part of 2 hours, interrupted only by my assistant's bathtime.



Note it is Sam the boy, not Samantha the girl. He will be getting his hair cut on Saturday.

(approx 5 hours)

Day 1 - Plan B anyone?

After 3 hours (time flies) of the "no-sorting, do everything out of the bags, in any order" technique we have accomplished five figures, a radar assembly and an indeterminate portion of the outer shell. Seriously this took us three hours, sifting through 5000 odd pieces is simply not working. My assistant is so bored he has gone off to do a Power Rangers puzzle, the spaceship not materialising as fast as he thought it would. As the Stranglers once said "Something's gotta change..."

Day 1 - How hard can it be ?

Conventional wisdom (and numerous YouTube videos) dictates that the first thing to do is read the manual thoroughly then sort every part out into little piles, prior to attempting to build anything. However under pressure from my assistant we search out the parts for the figures first. He wants to find Anakin Skywalker (he is new school). After a careful explanation of how Obi-Wan, Luke and Leia fit in and that we are not going to find Anakin in the box he is content to settle for assembling the five figures that are actually supplied.

This gives us the opportunity to familiarise ourselves with the 5195 (five thousand + !) pieces that make up the kit. I really don't want this stuff all over the study so our technique will be to only open the bags we need to assemble each sub-component. Knowing my assistant won't stand for making some boring sub-structure parts we dive straight into building the radar dish assembly. The slight spanner to this plan is that there is no logical sorting to the packets e.g.; unlike other Lego kits all the related parts for the Falcon are spread all across the kit somewhere.

Day 1 - A New Hope

A rainy afternoon and a massive Lego Millenium Falcon kit that has been sitting on the top of the wardrobe for over a year. A bit of time on my hands and a three year old pestering me to get "Star Wars" down to play with. Let's go...