Grover

Thanks again for the irregular base tutorial! I'll be doing more in the future. Thanks for the comment on the angle. I had actually forgotten that I had angled it since I started this so long ago, but yes, it is angled, and I spent quite a bit of time doing it! I did have to try out a bunch of variations with the technic pins, because it looked really thin with one layer. Glad everyone seems to like it. I'm kind of amazed how much time goes into these things and it gives me appreciation for the kind of builds you do! Yeah, I think there are a lot of problems with the hole in the roof. I mean, that can't be efficient heating, right? And the rain? I guess for a temporary structure it's better than having a tent next to a firepit. The building does have two windows: both on the second floor. One is behind the flag so is hard to see, and the other is on another side, both better visible in the additional pics in the album (if you click on the picture it takes you to flickr). These windows sit flush with the bricks, and they were kind of difficult to get them and the trim to sit back at the same spacing as the other paneling. Not as elaborate as many of the other windows, but again, as a temporary structure, it's pretty plane Jane. My next Tudor structure should be more ornate and interesting. Thanks for the comments!

Very nice build. I love the dark blue color for the roof on builds, and you did a great job here. The dark red on the shed is also very nice. The whole hill must take a lot of bricks, but it really looks good. I love the goats. They look fantastic! The haywagon and fence are great, too. I am not a huge fan of the super-detailed rundown looking walls, as I think they can start too look too cartoony, but that's just preference, and I think you did a great job with that here. The only part that I'm not super excited about are the blades on the windmill. They seem too open to me, maybe a little too short as well. Thanks for sharing, and keep up the awesome work!

First, Let me say that I really like the whole scene. In particular, I like the waterfall. You and Kai just did two really good waterfalls that I think feel organic and look realistic, which is awesome. I am really enjoying reading your stories to go along with your builds, too. The trees, color choices, and the flow of the stream looks great. Thanks for sharing!

I'd also recommend looking at the RBGs around here: Guilds of Historica, Brethren of the Brick Seas and Andromeda's gates. There are some really fantastic builders there to inspire you.

Very nice work! I like the juxtaposition of the tan and dark red church against the grey and olive castle walls. I also like the texture of the castle walls--nice color choice, and enough detail without being too busy. I agree about the proportions with most of the comments above--something looks odd (and I know it's because of the 48x48 constraint), but the funny thing is, that to me, it looks more like the proportions of the old classic castle sets. Pretty cool. The tree growing on the side of the rocks and wall is also a nice touch. Well done!

I like the roof! It's hard to create a believable thatched roof with plates and tiles, but you managed to do so. I tried over and over trying to get it right, and couldn't (which is why I went with technic), but you've done a great job. Amusingly, I think my favorite part is the chimney top. Great use of the panels! I think you are the master of tiny details, such as the windowsills here. Great job!

@TheLegomane you are welcome. The third part of the answer is in order to know if they are safe, one would have to know what the compounds in the brick are. Since these bricks are likely proprietary, the formulations are unknown to the public, so there is no information from which to draw conclusions. Sorry there is not a better answer.

TLG recommends 104°F, not °C, so that is not a typo. Their recommendation and the actual point at which the plastic begins to show signs of structural issues are separate entirely. Below is my guess as to how they arrived at this number based on my experience. It gets into the weeds, so please feel free to TL;DR it. To begin with, ABS has a Tg (glass transition temperature) of 221°F (105°C). Theoretically, this is where you should really see the polymer soften. However, by the pictures above, it's obvious some melting is occurring visibly at 100°C, so you can see deviations before this. Aberrations to the naked eye are going to be very large, so there's probably deformation occurring earlier that you can't easily see. To this end, you have to look at a few things: 1. UL Laboratories has tested ABS and concluded that the Relative Temperature Index (RTI) is 60°C from their thermal aging program. 2. The coefficient of linear thermal expansion is 73.8µm/µm•K and 3. The tolerances for Lego bricks are usually 1-2µm (which, by the way, is astonishing in the industry). Starting with #1: The thermal aging program, in their words: "The end-of-life of a material at each test temperature in this program is assumed to be the time when the value of the critical property had decreased to 50 percent of its original (as received) value. If a material has been investigated under the thermal-aging program, the relative temperature index (RTI), in degrees C, shown is based on a comparison with a material which has acceptable service experience and correlates numerically with the temperatures above in which the material is likely to degrade prematurely." Thus, they consider this temperature the maximum above which the piece suffers early problems. 60°C is not that hot (140°F); your hot water faucet probably produces 50°C water (in fact, the molds for Lego bricks are held only slightly above this temperature when they are made). Since TLG recommends 104°F (40°C), which is only 20°C below the point at which the bricks suffer permanent damage and premature failure, I would guess that is in order to give people a wide margin of error for cleaning their bricks. As @koalayummies observed, this is also about washing, so they probably don't want kids to be burned. Short exposure to 104°F water will transfer more heat to the brick than short exposure to 104°F air as well. Moving to #2: I may be wrong in suggesting that you will begin to notice differences in the bricks at 104°F, however, solids tend to expand linearly, so if you use the linear coefficient of expansion as an approximation and compare to room temperature (assuming 25°C for RT), and using 32mm for the initial length of the 2x4 brick at RT, you get: L1 = 32mm (0.032m) t1 = 25°C (298K) t2 = 40°C (313K) alpha = 73.8µm/µm•K (0.0000738m/mK) L2 = the length of the 2x4 brick at 104°F (40°C) And: L2 = L1•[1 + alpha•(t2-t1)] L2 = 0.032m•[1+0.0000738m/mK*(313K-298K)] = 0.032035424m or ~32.035mm, an expansion of 35µm. And now #3: Given that the tolerance of a brick is 1-2µm, I'd say you would likely notice a difference in the way they stick together. Given that a human hair is around 30-100µm thick, I seriously doubt you'd notice the difference by eye. If all your bricks are expanding at the same rate, there may not be a difference. If they expand at different rates or you take a hot brick and put it onto a cool one, then you will notice a difference. Somewhere on here, someone complained that they left their bricks in a hot car and now they have zero clutch power anymore. I would surmise that their car got above 140°F (60°C) in the sun and that the bricks lost their tolerances. Here's the TL;DR version: So can you go above 104°F to wash or transport your bricks safely? Probably. Can you do so above 140°F? Maybe not. And I would guess that in the back of a truck transporting the bricks to and from a store is probably like the trunk of your car where it usually remains below 140°F to answer the transport question. I would wager that the 104°F number likely comes due to a fairly wide safety margin for the bricks and the use/washing of bricks by children. References, if anyone wants to give themselves a headache with technical data: https://industries.ul.com/plastics-and-components/plastics/plastics-testing http://web.rtpcompany.com/info/data/0600/RTP600.htm https://www.creativemechanisms.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-abs-plastic

TLG recommends keeping it below 104°F. https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help/bricks-building/brick-facts/cleaning-your-lego-bricks-408100000007835 I doubt the humidity would have any effect, but the heat probably will once you're over 104°F, especially if you get direct sunlight (which it sounds like you do not). There's another topic on keeping bricks in a closed car with some discussion on this if you care to read more.

This is what I expected... essentially an architecture Hogwarts. I think that it is quite pretty for an architecture set. I really like the founder minifigs. Personally, I don't like the interiors at all, and don't like the microfigs. As I am not interested in the architecture sets, and this set doesn't have enough of the pieces that I like, I think that I will avoid purchase. I am also not fond of the excess stickers and lack of playability due to the scale. My only interest in this would be as an investment for sale at a later date. I think I'd rather buy another Big Ben for parts I can use in MOCs, however.

There may not be easy answers to all your questions, but I will do my best. 1. Usually the yellowing comes from bloom (aka leaching) of the flame retardant out of the brick; this may or may not be the case with every generation of brick. Such a reaction can be in reaction to external stimuli, such as UV light (usually the sun), heat, or something else. Thus, if you have a brick that was part of a wall, the UV could have hit it only one side, yellowing only that side. Hydrogen peroxide breaks down into radicals when hit with UV light, and it is these free radicals that then react with brominated (or other halogenated or labile functional groups) flame retardants to remove them. Again, this assumes that the flame retardants are the source of the yellowing and further that they are halogenated. Unless there are such functional groups on the colorants themselves (red, blue, green whatever), those shouldn't react in the same manner (although hydrogen peroxide is an oxidizer, so they could react with it in this capacity). If TLG changed additives, these could react in different ways with the retrobrighting process. In order to understand what was happening, you'd have to have TLG's formulations from the different time periods and examine the chemical additives individually for reactivity. 2. Ideally, yes, you should be able to wash away the brominated contaminants. Sad to say, solubilities make this nearly impossible, for the solvents such as the alcohols that you saw in the paper you linked to will dissolve (at least partially) or swell the ABS itself, ruining the bricks. So yes, it will remove the brominated materials, but it will destroy the bricks in the process. 3. One can't say one way or the other about the dangers of the older vs. newer bricks. In order to do so, you'd have to know what the original formulations were over the years for each brick and color, and then you'd have to be lucky enough to find studies that had been conducted on the carcinogenicity of each of these. The formulations are probably TLG proprietary, and the carcinogenic studies are fraught with questions, whether genuine or cooked up by industry trying to discredit them to keep selling their product, and thus you then have to sort all that out as well. As for those that have been 'retrobrighted', it's again difficult to say. They could leach faster or slower than untreated bricks, and there are no studies to my knowledge of the effects of retrobrighting on the structural integrity and porosity of the bricks. It could be that they bloom less or more, or that a whole new plasticizer/emulsifier/flame retardant/oligomer/etc. could be leached. The best guess you could make would be to take a look at studies done on ABS bloom from various decades (if indeed something like that has been done) and then hope that TLG used something along those lines in their formulations.

Thanks, HQ! Good to see you around Niku!

Thanks to all for the comments! I appreciate all of them and will take them into consideration for future builds. I have added responses to them all below. Thanks! In fact, there is a hole in the second story floor to let the smoke out. This design is based on David Macaulay's temporary house designs in the book Castle (which is the inspiration for much of my castle work), which I think is based on the English Cruck houses. Unfortunately, I have not had time to finish the interior, so I just posted what I had. Thank you! I personally preferred this pin technique, as the minifig hand technique was too yellow for me. I purposely chose the half offset timber sections, as the full offset on many other builds looked to be too much to me. Turns out, you can't see the half offset as well on pictures, so it looks more flat than I would have liked. In person, it's easier to see, but I think some of this is my failure at lighting properly. Hopefully that won't be as much of an issue in the future as I learn. I agree about the tan and reddish brown; I didn't have anything else. I have very few dark brown pieces, and not being part of a LUG and some 6+ hours from the nearest Lego store, need to get them from Bricks and Pieces or Bricklink. I had already spent a lot on pieces from Bricks and Pieces (the OD stalks, tan tiles) and BL (the technic pins), so I just used what I had for the timber. I wish I had more shades of brown! I would have really enjoyed using dark tan for the sides of the house and then using another color for the dirt yard around it. I think next time I will have to bite the bullet and get more pieces from BL or B&P. I am hoping I can get another build out in less than a year this time! Cheers to the half-timbered Tudor club! Thanks for your comments. I think if I had been free-designing, I would have put a balcony or more decorations on this, but I had designed it after Macaulay's Castle book, so it was kind of hard to avoid putting more decorations and details in. I think next time I will take your advice and add more decorations/design to the structure. The offset (overhang) between ground and first floor is in the works for the next peasant structures, though! Glad you liked the roof. It was both the most challenging and the most rewarding part of the structure. Thanks a bunch! As I mentioned to TitusV, I think next time I will have to add more detail to the work, like a balcony, etc. Glad you liked the gap in the roof--I figured that it was more accurate, especially for a temporary house that was not meant to last long. Nobody wants to waste time on a chimney when the house is going to be torn down in a couple of years. :-)

Nice build! I like the idea that there was some manual labor going on (i.e., not powered by water, wind, or animals), as I'm sure that really went on in the medieval world. Two small critiques: The shrine seems busy to me; I think it is because there is a lot of detail packed into a small area, it's hard to tell what is going on inside. I wasn't sure what it was until you described it. I run into this problem in my build... there seems to be a fine balance between trying to pack in the detail while still leaving things open enough to see all of it. The other critique is more to my eye, which is not as refined as some of the others here, but there seems to be a lot of dark tan. I like the detail of the stones added from some of your other builds, but maybe addition of some grasses or built up darker brown near the edges of the paths could help break up the dark tan? I'm not entirely sure. In any case, I really like the details of the guy shoveling the grain out of the sack with the pitchfork and the open timber structure is nice. I think many people want to make enclosed structures and it's nice to see an open one. One of the aspects I really like is the rockwork with the white flowers. It looks very organic to me, and gives the feel of a mountain setting. Great job!

Love the story and the build! I really like how you keep clean 'classic-castle' type lines without sacrificing detail. I want to take all your MOCs and stick them together into one big city! I like the details of the wall where the plaster/rockwork has fallen away exposing the brick behind it. Also, the murdered guardsman slumped through the crenel is hilarious!

Awesome, as usual! I love the roof, and all the detail you work in around the windows and doors. I also appreciate that you rarely use the same ideas twice--always expanding. I always enjoy seeing your new builds. If I had any critique, I would suggest that the door on the right looks more like a blocked off doorway than a door, although since I don't see a handle, maybe that's what it's supposed to be? Thanks for sharing again!

Very creative to use the skunks as badgers! Contrary to some of the others, I like the big grey wall effect. It appears to be a well-maintained fortress wall to me. If you wanted an older look, I would suggest maybe adding more texture as the others have said, but that is a personal preference in my opinion. I love the color scheme with the snow, dead grasses and the awesome looking fall colored tree. Great job!

Very nicely done! There's a number of points here that I really like: the round tiles stuck into the sand green plates for a roof texture, some of the angled rockwork, and the waterfalls. The waterfalls, in particular, I think deserve special attention, as I rarely see waterfalls that look realistic to me. All the pictures of waterfalls I have ever seen have nothing but white foamy water crashing down, and so many times I see people include blue color with the waterfall, which looks out of place to me. By using the clear pieces, you have achieved the white foamy look, which to my eye makes it look all the more natural. I think you did a good job with the ocean, but I find that the trans light blue seems a bit out of place--like it's in the carribean or something. Maybe you wanted to go for a fantastic setting, in which case it works, but a darker trans color or a darker plate structure underneath may lend to a more ocean like look. Overall excellent work! I am excited to continue to see more of your builds!

Ha! I finally managed to finish this build and get pics before the end of Book II! Woo hoo! Avalonia freebuilds! (Apologies to HQ for screwing up his list for Book II...)

The Tales of Lady Gwenllian 0. Introduction 1. The arrival of Lady Gwenllian aboard the Cedar Serpent 2. Scouting a Site 3. Early Spring in Prenmôr Having received a charter from Queen Ylspeth to build and a license to crenellate, Lady Gwenllian and her small host made plans for a castle and built shelters for the winter. While temporary, these structures were designed to last several years while the main fortifications were built. The two-story, dirt-floored structures were framed out of timber (garnered by skillful negotiations of Myellan with the local elven tribes of the nearby forest), and the walls were sealed with wattle and daub. Because of the season of her arrival, it was too late in the year to establish quarries and there was no stone to be had. The thatched roofing was constructed from local plants and grasses, and a hole was left at the apex of the chimneyless structure to allow smoke from the central firepit to escape. In early spring, as the weather began to warm and the snows melted, the dead grasses began to give way to new growth. Alis was given the task of caring for the fowl, Chwyd took to sweeping up (having vowed to never voyage by ship again due to his seasickness), and Lady Gwenllian led by example, hefting supplies along with her people. The new Avalonian colors hung proudly over Lady Gwenllian's house. Over the winter, she and her lady at arms, Seren, had been planning the new fortifications. Quarries would need to be established, timber would have to be sourced, workers would have to be found, and all with the cooperation of the local elven and human communities in such a manner as to preserve the environment. Castwyr and Myellan had spent part of the winter getting to know the neighbors of this region. The winter had not been particularly harsh and Lady Gwenllian felt optimistic about the upcoming spring in her new home, deciding to name her small village Prenmôr, meaning 'refuge' in her native tongue. I welcome comments and criticisms, and I especially appreciate specifics--if you like/dislike something, please tell me why, and if you see areas for improvements, I would like to know what I'm missing. I'm trying to learn how to make my builds better, so any tips or advice is appreciated!

Some of the challenges can go one direction or another in the story, and usually the side with the greatest number of builds will win out, and thus drive the story that way.

I'd bet you're right. The forums in general have been pretty dead recently. Even the Town forum, which seems to have a lot of traffic, has been dragging lately. I think once school starts again, people will be back from vacation.

I am speaking from experience and my perspective. I am intimidated. Fortunately, I am somewhat shameless, so I have no problems being torn down. Other new members may be, though, as being intimidated is my initial reaction and so it may be for others. Also, the guys you just mentioned here as the longest running members are those that are posting the bulk of the builds now--I would also consider you to be among the high quality builders here. I agree, there are few new members, but why not have a category just for them? Then if there's only 3, one wins a prize. Great! Those low odds should attract more new members in my thinking at least. I am merely suggesting this, so the guild leaders can do what they want. The reason I am here, and left Classic-Castle, is for feedback, which is significantly more here than CC. I am more than happy to see more feedback. Any way we can do that would be great in my opinion.

I agree that we need to show weaker builds, however, we have run into the problem that without a constant influx of new people, the only builders who are left are very, very good. Maybe we need to open a few contests or categories to new folks only (i.e., those with less than a certain # of builds, or those who have been a member for less than a certain period of time?), and that would help us get newer members feeling like they can still compete and yet have something to aspire to?

I think the portion about how to get new people to join may be very much relevant to Book III. How do we get more people interested in Book III? Can we somehow make more limited builds, like 16x16 or even 8x8, that don't require a lot of bricks to join? Those were the ones that most appealed to me, as I felt that I had enough of the 'good' colors to do something like this. A bunch of unlimited size builds, or even 32x32 size, may be too large for newcomers. Sure, I like the idea of a few of these so we can make new builders oooh and aaaah over the spectacular builds, but for those without access to a LUG or regular access to several Lego stores, I would like to see several size limited builds. Typically there seem to be a good balance of these, but perhaps we could have more? Maybe a color-restricted build as well? Those might be kind of interesting.