Grover

Very nice. I think I just spent an hour looking through all the images in detail. I like all the details in there, and the awesome connection everything has. The color choices are very artistic, too. Excellent!

Nice job! I have seen each of the MOCs in other threads, and they look good by themselves, but together they form a really nice, coherent city block. I really like the brewing company and the texture on the side of the firehouse wall.

Oxyclean is a percarbonate salt (i.e., instead of a hydrate, it is a hydrogen peroxidate). Thus, you're really just generating H2O2 in situ when using Oxyclean, so if you think you are not applying an oxidizer, you are. However, there are several advantages to Oxyclean: 1. As a solid, it does not degrade on storage like liquid solutions of H2O2. Thus, using a scoop of Oxyclean now will be the same as using it next year, and thus you don't have to worry about degradation (i.e., 'going off', as noted by anothergol). 2. The carbonate portion of the salt is basic. This may or may not help with what you are trying to do. 3. You can add more Oxyclean to concentrate the hydrogen peroxide solution higher than standard 3% solutions in a bottle. As for yellowing of clears, isn't the clear a polycarbonate? Or were they polycarbonates back in the day? Most of the bricks should be ABS, but I believe that the transparents are polycarbonate and I have never seen it in print, but I suspect that the trees are probably polyethylene or polypropylene (based on their soft texture). I think there are some rubbery parts, too (spear tips, some minifigure items), and am not sure what the polymer is. In any case, the standard yellowing is thought to be due to the brominated flame retardants that used to be put into the ABS bricks. These would break down over time and leach the brownish decomp products into the polymer, leaving the 'yellowed' look. This can be destroyed by the free radical oxygen caused by the action of UV light on hydrogen peroxide (thus the leaving the H2O2 solution out in the sun). This solution only presents itself on the surface, however, and more of the additive will diffuse through the polymer over time, thus leaving the yellowed color again despite being protected from light. I suspect that the decomposition is thermal rather than light catalyzed, or at least thermal with a light activated chain reaction, and thus it will yellow when stored away from light. I suspect if you cleaned up a white brick with the H2O2, then put it in your freezer, it would keep white much, much longer than if you left it out at room temperature. The next question is: How do you clean up clear polycarbonate bricks? One needs to understand the mechanism of discoloration. If it is due to surface abrasion, then polishing the surface again would help. If it is due to diffusion of polymer additives over time, then the nature of this additive must be understood to discern a method of clean up. Off the top of my head, I don't know what the difference is in flame retardants and plasticizers between ABS and PC. PDF with list of ABS additives for those who are interested: http://icl-ip.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/ABSGnlICLIP.pdf

Fingarfelin looks great! (We can see the pic, obviously). Looking forward to your builds!

Welcome to both of you! Looking forward to seeing your sig figs and builds around the guild!

Do you have a pic of Fingarfelin? I am excited to meet the newest member of the guild!

I would also suggest opening up Valeryio. Personally, I will continue to build in Avalonia, but I think that a new guild may drive some more interest. Maybe others have different opinions (i.e., a 5th guild will dilute membership even more in specific guilds, etc.), I don't know.

I like mccoyed's idea of a soft promotional challenge. That could be fun to kickstart things and gauge interest per guild. My time has been extremely limited since I joined, moreso than I expected or wanted, although I hope to be more on top of things when I return home later in July and I have been reading the posts and keeping up with the guilds. Because of this, I have not had the chance to further the story of Lady Gwenllian much, so Lady Gwenllian will remain loyal to Avalonia, and will reuse her original picture since little has changed for her. I will update it when I return home with her household. I had one build about 90% done when I had to leave for a family medical emergency; hopefully I can get that posted before August 1.

The Tg (glass transition temperature) is around 105°C (221°F), but Lego recommends not exposing them to temps over 104°F: https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help/bricks-building/brick-facts/cleaning-your-lego-bricks-40810000000783 I have never overheated ABS plastic, but I suspect that the 1-2 micron tolerances in bricks are ruined in the heat seen in vehicles.

I have around 200,000 bricks in my collection. Most are in sets that are put into Ziploc bags; the instructions and boxes are stored collapsed separately. The bulk bricks that I have are in large gallon Ziploc bags. I wound up with a bunch of cast off boxes from my old work years ago of dimension: 33.78 x 37.78 x 40.00 cm (~45L). If I pack the bricks into these until they are full, it takes about 20 boxes to hold the collection (I know because I moved recently). No idea what the weight is on that, but if you consider 10,000 pcs/45L of volume, that might give you a rough estimate. No idea on weight, although as some have said, bricklink has weights, and you might be able to add up set weights and such. Good luck!

I was hoping for a portion of the building in minifig scale. While some, like Big Ben or the Statue of Liberty are not minifig sized, I was willing to buy them for parts, as the price per part was fine. For $500, unless the piece count is 8000+, it's not worth it to me. In my opinion, even London Bridge and Big Ben could be worthwhile as displays (like the architecture sets), but the Helicarier is not, since it should be a playable set but was not. I think a microscale Hogwarts will be a flop at that price tag personally. Good news for me: I'll take that money and buy multiple copies of the Great Hall for parts now.

Lego did make dark brown carrots in the Medieval Marketplace, and they were on the floor of the horse stables!

I like reading here on the forums, as it collects all the Flickr links for me. I check one website and get the links, rather than having to bookmark a bunch of pages and look through them individually for updates all the time. I don't know how other people do it. Thanks for posting,though, I love your work!

Once again, I am very impressed with your build! Not only have you pioneered new designs and techniques in your decorations, but you have chosen a subject that is also unique. Even all the more impressive since you are not in a LUG. I love it! Your builds have inspired me to think about the ways I build things and I am trying new techniques now. Awesome job! Please keep sharing your builds, this is great!

I disagree. I think that the minidolls are just as unrealistic as the Lego minis, simply in a different way. Whereas the traditional minifigures are somewhat blocky and pixellated (kind of 8-bit looking), the dolls look like extra long, extra-tall heroin addicts. In my opinion, they are both as unrealistic as the other at different ends of the spectrum. Which is more realistic? Sponge-bob squarepants or Gumby? Neither if you ask me, but as people are pointing out, they appeal to different target audiences.

A 75° double slope, with the slopes pointed inward, a la 3046a. 1x2 tile in trans green or trans dark green Cut a new mold for the cypress trees!

I wanted a table that held my drawers and two 48x48 plates wide, plus a few inches extra. I bought a 3/4" sheet of plywood, cut it to size, and set it on a sturdy shop table frame, like this: https://www.grainger.com/product/4TW93?cm_mmc=PPC:+Google+PLA&s_kwcid=AL!2966!3!56638277637!!!s!102629199717!&ef_id=WyLTIAAABGgRxEVw:20180614204208:s Probably overkill, but I found a used frame locally for $10. Depends on how sturdy you want it. I can stand on mine.

The rockwork is awesome! I like the details of vegetation and the flowering tree too--the color choices are great. The road wasn't super convincing for me at first, with the rectangles, but then when I thought of it as the remnants of an old paved road, it made a little more sense. If you were trying to convey that, you could try add in a few dark grey tiles, and maybe put a couple together in a staggered configuration like brickwork. I love the wagon and ox, too. Very nice little vignette!

How big of a structure do you want? For me, I wanted to build something big, so I tried several prototypes. For my walls, I decided what height I wanted in real life (a 20' wall say) and then calculated based on the average height of a medieval male (5'8") relative to a Lego mini. Based on that, 20' is about 16 bricks tall. So, if you want a 10' wall, it's about 8 bricks. Then things start to look proportional and you go from there. One of the books I ordered that was helpful with thinking of variations on designs, etc. for me was this: https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Fortress-Castles-Walled-Cities/dp/0306813580/ref=sr_1_24?ie=UTF8&qid=1528165510&sr=8-24&keywords=medieval+castle+book As for the walls, it depends on what you're going for: windows, arrow loops, or other features. Depending on what you're going for and how precise you want to be with the dimensions and proportions will depend on what you want to do. Your machicolations look great! The merlons look good for some periods and style of castle/fortress, but might not fit others, so it's kind of up to your style. I built a prototype with a corner tower that was to scale for what I wanted, but it included much larger merlons with arrow loops in them: Ultimately, I didn't like the large 1x arrow loops, so I scrapped the design and went a different direction, but this was why I was building a prototype. Also didn't like the towers that much, so did something else there, too.

I tried building portcullises with bricks, but they are not particularly stable (unless you like gluing your bricks). The portcullises that came with the old castle sets weren't wide enough for me, but once the Rancour Pit came out: https://shop.lego.com/en-US/Rancor-Pit-75005 it contained a new, larger portcullis, so I bought a bunch of those on BrickLink for my gatehouses. I haven't checked lately, but they were less than $2 when I bought mine a year or two ago. Pretty inexpensive for a portcullis in my opinion. I made a functional portcullis that has to be winched up and has a quick release down, as the originals did, by tying a string to the portcullis, running it up through a single hole technic brick to guide it, then onto a technic axle that was connected to a large wheel. You winch the portcullis up slowly by turning the wheel by hand, as was commonly done in the medieval period. Then the portcullis is locked into the up position by putting a brick holding the large wheel in place. This can be done by putting a technic pin in the wheel, or using a gear for the wheel. I put a large 1x2x5 brick protruding down from the floor above into the gear, holding it in place. When you want to drop the gate, simply lift the brick, and the portcullis falls. I disguised my brick from above as part of a crenellation, so it belnded in. You can see a prototype of the portcullis in place here: I actually don't have any pics of the mechanism, and won't have access to my bricks until later in the summer, but would be happy to take a picture in July when I return if you are still interested.

Awesome! I think that yours is one of the few double concentric castles out there, and certainly one of the few on this scale. Love it!

Excellent work again. I like the packed dirt as other have said, as it is very realistic to what was probably done in ancient times (being a simple route to building a wall). I mentioned before the solid dark tan could use some small detail work (stones, a green stalk her or there) as other have also said, but, if this is going to be part of a larger structure that fits together, it may work when it is large. I love the color choices, too. The darker, muted tones are great.

What a fantastic build! There's so many great things, it's hard to pick my favorite. I love the texture on the plastered walls on the second story of the house, the irregular, gently rolling base, and the texture of the various grasses and plants around the cart parked near the house. The rockwork looks good too--the SNOT technique helps break up the 'paper shredder' effect that one can see on traditional cliff builds with the 65 and 75° slopes. Love it!

I am still around, reading everything, trying to find time to post and, more importantly, build. I have very little time to build (less than an hour a month on average now) and just finished a small house I've been working on for over a year. I was going to take pictures and post them, and then my wife had complications and we now have a child early (having a child is awesome). That does, however, cut into my building time even more, so hopefully sometime later this summer I'll be freed up enough to at least take pictures of my small cottage and post those. I'm excited to see where Book 3 goes, and I think if we can get a codified storyline, we will see more builds here. I'd love to help out the mods here pushing things along, but at this point, I think I may have less time than them.

Very nice! There's a number of aspects to it I really like: in particular, the straight lines and corners are straight, but not 'clean' (as in the old 1980s sets), as you've added texture to the stonework. While some people like a more dilapidated look to many stone structures, I like to see straighter lines to structures that are in use and maintained. Real castles many times laid down layers of slate every so many feet to keep the structure flat and straight. I also love the use of the vertical brown tiles; to me, it simulates the appearance of a wooden palisade, which is not easy to do at times given the space constraints of Lego. The overall design with the ladders out back is great, too. I love the color choice for the dirt in the back (dark tan), and I think the technique that you used to make a slight gradient in elevation would be awesome for a large display. My only suggestion would be in this particular case to perhaps put a few 1x1 round plates or a few flower stalks around the edge of the wall to give a little more texture/detail to the area with all the dark tan, as I think on this scale, the subtle elevation texturing you did is a little lost. Overall, very nice build, and thank you for sharing with us during this slowdown of builds!