Legostein

Hello everybody! I would like to bring the small DUPLO (row)boat to your atttention. It can be really useful. You can see some examples here. Cheers, ~Chris

Small-hulled boats using the DUPLO rowboat, including a quick "how-to"-tutorial 1. Introduction Hello everybody, today I would like to take you on a quick building journey where we will see how the DUPLO rowboat can conveniently used to build small boats for any standard-brick-scaled diorama. So, let's start! 2. Getting in touch First we get in touch with the DUPLO rowboat. It is widely available on the secondary markets, and is also quite affordable. We will have a quick comparison with the other rowboats commonly used later in this tutorial. 3. The first brick is the hardest DUPLO was once designed to fit with the standard brick system. It still works today (there are some changes to the bottom tubes today, so that you are more limited as in former days, but maybe this will be another tutorial). 4. Completing the deck Now we simply fill up the duplo studs with 2x4 bricks. Already looks nice, doesn't it? You already could start building your boat now, but we want to get more available standard studs on the main deck to build on. 5. Laying deck planks The most quick and simple way is to attach two wedge plates on the 2x4 bricks as show below. The space utilisation is already very good! 6. A tough decision: Overlapping or staying within the railing? With the result of step 5 we now have two options. We can build a boat staying within the railing, or we can overlap the railing a little bit as it is often done when building with small boats. We will start with overlapping first, as for staying within the railing the unfilled gaps are still a little too wide. Later in this tutorial we will see how we can use the maximum of space when we want to stay with in the railing. 7. Overlapping the railing A big benefit of the DUPLO rowboat is that its railing stays at the same height from the front to the rear. This make overlapping quite easy! Below is an example of how it can be done with a few additional bricks. The photo is detailed enough so you can see the construction without any plans needed. There are two separate sections to be attached on the main deck, but you can remove what you have bricked into the row boat's hull already, and make a complete inner hull piece: And this is what our DUPLO boat now looks with the railing slightly overlapped. I bet you can already see what nice boats could be built with that! 8. Staying within the railing When we want to build a boat and stay within the dimensions of the original railing, we can try to use the optimum of space within the hull. At first we remove three of the four 2x4 bricks again to obtain the the results as show in step 3. Instead of bricks we can even attach a 4x6 plate a little lower into the hull. Also the tubes of plates will fit into the hollow DUPLO studs but not as tightly as those of bricks. But this won't be an obstacle. Witha a few more pieces you obtain a really nice main deck with very good space utilisation. You have again two inlay pieces. But this time you have to stick them separately into the DUPLO boat hull. And this is how the DUPLO boat looks with a nicely fitting main deck within its railing: 9. Comparing boat hulls With the two options shown above you get two ready-to-build-on boat hulls. But what other small boat hulls are there, and how are they different? Let's have a quick look: From left to right (or top to bottom on the right side) these are: The Belville rowboat, the Fabuland rowboat, the DUPLO rowboat, the standard rowboat. You can see that the Belville rowboat (was first introduced in the year 1998 in two Belville sets before having been released in brown color in the year 1999 within the Adventurers series) is the longest of all rowboats, being 18 studs in length. All other rowboats are 14 studs in length. The Belville and Fabuland rowboat have 6 studs in width available for building, while the DUPLO boat and the standard rowboat only have 4 studs to build on. But as you have see above, we can give the DUPLO rowboat 6 studs for building with some extra pieces. On the very right you can see that the DUPLO boat has the only railing that stays on the same height level. A minor drawback of the DUPLO hull is that the outer hull is not as detailed as for the other three boats which feature a pattern of outer hull planks. But this won't prevent us from haveing building fun with the two hulls we just designed: 10. Let's build boats! Finally you have made it through the tutorial and we can start building boats! We will start with the overlapped railing, and then continue by staying with the railing. I hope you enjoyed it so far and I hope you will like the two resulting boats! And here you can see them in front of blue background from alle sides: 11. Summary We have seen two possibbilities to use the DUPLO rowboat for stanard brick scaled builds. We can overlap the hull or stay within its dimensions. The DUPLO rowboat hull is a great piece and a welcome addition to the boats hull variety.

Hello everybody, this small-hulled boat comes with a classic brick-built hull in old brown with white and green spots, a color scheme that works nicely. There are angled doors for the cabin, and two of those fancy round window frames at rear. The sails are take in, for the simple reason, that there were no large dark tan cloth pieces available at the time. This little boat was built before the flood of new official sail ships by the LEGO group with sets like 10320 (dark tan sails), 10335 (tan sails), and 76440 (white). While I appreciate more cloth sails on the one hand, the challenge of finding appropriate cloth pieces that could be used as sails became a lot more boring. Anyway, you best use this boat docked at a harbour. For those of you who think this color scheme looks familiar, yes you are right, there is a bigger cousin of this small boat: All the best, and see you around! ~ Chris

Hello! Now seeing some more details of this gargantuan ship, I spotted you used a 1970s Homemaker head and torso as figurehead! All thumbs up for that very nice touch! Cheers, ~ Chris

Very cool catamaran and additional canoes! I also appreciate that you looked for suitable minifigure to fit into the theme. Cheers, ~ Chris

These ships are really huge! Whenever I use the old classic boat hull pieces I think I am building a big ship. But these appear tiny towards those colossal line ships you built! But I realise, this is the more common way to buidl ships these days. Can you give a rough dimensions calculation here, how many studs in length and width? Cheers, ~ Chris

A very impressive layout there! No worries, it is no disadvantage that it is a very long and narrow display. You did a perfect job to use available space for the scene. Are you using old and discoloured bricks in that wall construction? Excellent! Authentic look and authentic building style. Cheers, ~ Chris

Thank you for stepping by, all three of you! You are right, there are quite some ships with yellows sails now. The main challenge for group photos is always: free space. I hope to get a proper light source soon to make a photo of the entire fleet which I will gladly show to you then at this place. Cheers, ~ Chris

Thank you for your comments, both of you! The classic nostaligic era is simply where I feel well the most. A great advantage when building in a simple clear way is that I can keep build bigger layouts for exhibitions more affordable for me. I hope to attend an exhibition someday with the whole theme. See you around! ~ Chris

Thank you Franco for your comment! You nailed it absolutely precisely. I try to make these little builds to look like sets of former days when classci pirates came out. To make ita little more challenging, I try to use pieces - and also minifigures - from different themes than pirates. Cheers, ~ Chris

Hello everybody! Since the start of the official LEGO(R) pirate series, there have been only a few sets representing native people from tropical islands. The Islanders came with several sets in the year 1994 as a part of the first pirate sets wave started in the year 1989. With allthose beautiful ships and locations built by the fine people of this forum, there must be many many islands out there, so it just seems reasonable that there are several native populations out there, too. So, I would like to share the creations of the "Natives of the Archipelago" with you. The small series is designed in a classic playset style to fit within the modular pirate layout you might remember a few years ago. In fact, the natives creations had also begun to be constructed years ago for a local exhibition, but then things went wild, and it has taken me until now to finish the creations. Anyway, have a good day!

Hello again everybody! For those who liked the "Explorer Fleet" with the yellow sails, there is a new ship type joining the fleet: a Polacre (with a large latin sail first, before the masts with square sails). With that the Explorer fleet comes with a... - Galleon - Polacre - Xebec - Carrack - and many small boats (latin sailer, cutter, catboats) But first the pictures of the Polacre: And here for comparison a lineup of all medium-sized ships of the Explorer Fleet, from left to right: Galleon, Polacre, Xebec, Carrack And finally - just for completion - the small boats (the first one is new, too, by the way), from left to right: a Cutter, a Latin Sailer, a small Catboat Thanks for stepping by, take care and see you around! ~ Chris

Hello everybody! It's been a stormy time, but now I made my way out of the storm. I would like to continue with a small pirate sloop for our classic-style "old-school" pirate world. It has a brick-built hull in old brown color. Scala snow pieces are used as sails, no official sail pieces. Such foam pieces were already used for the yellow sails of the "Explorer Fleet". The pirate crew uses classic looking torsos from the themes Space, Castle and Star Wars, all heads are classic ones without white pupils. The former and still ongoing challenge and mission was to invent new pirate factions with ships and figures as alternatives and/or addition to the official pirate theme sets. This is the second "bigger" pirate ship for my alternate pirate world series, maybe you can remember the "Small Pirate Brigantine" which uses a similar 8-wide bricked hull: I really try to be back on a more regular base from now on. All the best and see you around! ~ Chris

Excellence in simplicity.

Hello everybody! During the past months you have seen the more caribbean part of my classic pirate world layout with islands and fortresses. Today, I would like to introduce you to the more european end of the layout. There is a small harbor town called Old Brickstonehall where you can find the stores of the local merchants. You will find below: The Blacksmith The Tailor The Baker The Cobbler The Butcher The Fishmonger The Coster The houses use many different colors and a unique roof for each building. They have flat sides so they can conveniently attached to a long street. They are built on the old 10x20 brick/plates without bottom tubes, so the entire town is modular. More buildings soon! You will find the trade port with its red storehouses on the west end of town, and a special layout on the east end (photos soon). All the best, and have a good start into the new week! PS: Since the boundaries between the eras are smooth, the houses are also suitable for a medieval town for our friends of the castle forum.