Eilif

V-W-3D Update: Smaller non-link pics in post 6. Sorry this is a bit late in coming. I promissed a Brickington update for the beginning of December, but I've not been around EB much the last month or so. As is often the case, my pics are fairly crap, so I have provided links to better (and larger) pics taken by other members of NILTC. I think you'll agree that clicking the links to see the new ferry and mountaintop development is worth it. The Story of Brickington Continues... Having seen first hand the booming tourism industry that resulted from downtown renovations and the addition of a small seaplane airport, the town of Brickington Island has decided to add regular ferry service. Formerly only sporadically visited by ferrys vising the larger islands of the Brick Sea, Brickington is now serviced twice daily by the inter-island ferry service. It is hoped that the ability of tourists and residents to access the mainland more eaily "by car" will result in an increased number of visitors to the island and more outside investment. Here is a port-side view the Ferry in the harbor, loading up cars and walk-ons for the trip to the mainland. You can't see it in the pics, but the ferry has a full interior. Stairs connect the car deck to the passenger deck which has full seating acomadations and a vending machine. Staris then lead up to the wheel house which has a full complement of navigation equipement and a small lounge. http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/ErasureM...-1/img_0031.jpg Here is a starboard sive view. On the right side note the small ticket shack and the que of walk-on passengers waiting their turn. The Ferry has quickly become a necessary part of daily life. http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/ErasureM...-1/img_0032.jpg The ferry was a necessary development, but the construction of a ferry landing was not without difficulty. The town board realized the benefits for locating the landing adjacent to the downtown area, but the current residents of the proprty were not willing give up their land without a fight. Thankfully, a comprimise was quickly reached. The township acquired the property by granting the current residenta larger plot of land on the bluffs overlooking the harbor. (please ignore the magnificent star wars buildings in the back, they are part of pepaquinn's display and are not my MOC's) http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=3585986 Some members of the board thought that paying for the moving of the existing residence and stabilizing the land atop the bluffs was a bit too large an expense, but seeking to begin construction on the landing quickly, and to avoid any unpleasant legal wrangling, the agreement was accepted. The house was moved to it's new cliff-top location where the new owners have begun to raise horses on a bit of land adjacent to an existing corn field and christmas tree farm. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=3587866 I'm not sure why one of the christmas tree loggers is cutting up the corn field, but sometimes these things happen on Brickington Island...

I'm in. I even have an avatar now...

Some very interesting developments here. I'm not really into HALO weapons, but it's great to see once again how Will responds to his customers. I remember how many folks wanted the needler and energy sword when he was doing them as one-offs. To see them coming as stock items now is really great.

Very good job. Your buildings have a very "classic town" feel to them. Condensed, but with some very nice designs, particularly the cafe terrace. I also like your design for a stovetop, and record player. I definately need to add a record shop to Brickington Island.

Again, Great Review Brickster! I really like the color of this new octopus. The trans color in the preliminary pictures would have looked more "monster'ish" but this color looks much more like a real sea creature, and will look good next to my older grey octopi. As for the parrot, is the coloring painted on, or molded in? Perhaps nostalgically, I prefer the older painted parrot, but if it is molded color, then I would consider this new bird to be an improvement in terms of the durability of colors that can't "wear off"

Great review Brickster, Very thorough. I'm glad to see that alot of these new pirate sets have dark green bandanas, as those of us with the originals have plenty of blue and red. I was also pleased to see that it includes and extra blue epaulette piece, the one color epaulelette I want more of. One question, in the pics, the blue epaulette's seem to be of a more vibrant color than the older pirate blue epaulette color. Are they a different shade, or is it just my monitor?

I can't take credit for the stackable figure rack, I found a similar thing on Lugnet a few years back. I'm glad I could pass the idea to you though. It really does make it incredibly easy to find whatever minifig parts you are looking for. Asside from headgear, my unassembled minifig parts only take up one small and one large drawer in my drawer organizer. I can't imagine how I would organize my figure parts if they were all disassembled, especially since I may now have over 900 minifigs if you count the ones that are stored separately as part of my NILTC club module. Thanks. Those used to be my favorite themes also. I feel a bit guilty that I have been neglecting them in favor of town for the last couple years. I keep telling myself that eventually I'll do some castle and/or pirate MOCs. I've amassed quite a collection of castle wall pieces that are just begging to be put to use. Best of luck on your project, I think you'll find that sorting your brick makes it a lot easier to build and build quickly

Ah, musical gear, an obsession almost as dangerous as LEGO. I'm not generally a fan of design asthetic of most Ibanez, Yamaha, and LTD gear, but all those companies make very good quality products. I'm a bit mad for bass guitar gear. You can see my gear list here: http://www.talkbass.com/forum/member.php?u=18598 GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) is a very serious condition....

Thanks, it's really pleasing to have it all done, and it seems to be a good sustainable system. I bought a PAB cup this weekend, and it contained about a dozen different kinds of bricks. It only took me a couple of minutes to get it all sorted and organized. I should mention that I didn't succeed on all counts. One of the goals was to have all pieces accessible while sitting in my chair. The second tier of bulk tile cups are just out of reach when sitting. Doesn't bother me though. Thanks, I'll get to work on the teleporter....

Here's what most people don't understand. LEGO didn't invent the product. As whitehexagon points out, Kiddiecraft of England did. LEGO copied the product, adjusted it, and made it successfull. This idea that LEGO invented the "Binding Brick" is rediculous. Over the years LEGO has, as any company would, tried to use copyright law to benefit their particular product, but they were unsuccessfull. They still hold valid copyrights and patents on many LEGO pieces and designs, but they have never had the exclusive right to make a Brick product that is compatible with 'LEGO' metrics. LEGO has been a "protected" brand by various means in various European countries, but gradually those laws are being overturned. This may be a sad day for LEGO execs, but it's just another good day for those who value the free market and competition. Competition creates even more incentive for making your product stand out through higher quality, more innovation, and lower price. There have been competing brands, and they have had more or less success for decades, and this decision won't really change anything, with the exception of making it slightly more likely that we will see a bit more "clone" products in Europe.

Neat idea for a thread. I think there was one about bands, but I hadn't seen anything about what instruments people play, I'm sure that the creativity on EB spills over into the musical realm. I play electric bass, and some upright bass. I also like to assemble and modify electric basses as a hobby. I don't "build" my own parts from scratch, but I've built/assembled 5 or so instruments and repaired and modified countless other basses and guitars for myself and my friends. Notable achievements... I'm not a great musician, just a fairly solid player somewhere between amateur and semi-pro. Thus, there's not much that I've achieved on my own. However about two years ago, without knowing much about the style of music, I joined a country band ( www.janesvillecountry.com) with some more experienced musicians than myself. It's been a great learning experience and has given me some pretty neat opportunities to play some great gigs, including Chicago Country Music fest, and being an opening act for Randy Travis and Trace Adkins.

Other Organization Details This will probably be the last "content" post for this blog. I finished the sorting a few days ago, but here's some details of my organization that weren't covered in the proceeding posts. Here's the shelving unit. The lower left and right corners of the shelves have shoebox size plastic cases. They hold some of the odd sized pieces that take up alot of room such as BURPS, castle wall pieces, motors and battery packs, boat pieces, and as seen below, odd sized wall pieces and 3 boxes of wheels. The green accordion files contain LEGO brochures and instructions. On the right and left end of the system are my figure shelves. I keep almost all my figures assembled, with only some in parts in drawers. Probably less than half of the figures are just as they would have come in sets. This organization system makes it very easy to find a certain figure or figure parts. Luckily the 2nd floor room where my LEGO has comparatively little dust, and a very light feather dusting every couple months is more than adequate. Here's the left side of the desk. On the top, you will notice the PAB cups. These are where I will put bricks by color as I acquire them, and when a cup is full, I'll sort it into my collection. Here's a selection of the drawer contents showing some of the ways I organize various "special" parts Well that's it, thanks for following this undertaking of mine. I'm quite pleased with the results, but the real test will be my next undertaking. I will be adding some significant additions to Brickington Island, and if the organization system is truly workable, I should be able to access, build with, and sort out the bricks with minimal difficulty. Now on to the building...

Glad to hear about your progress Jim. Be sure to post the results. The last sorting OK, so this is the last sorting that I did, I have pictures of sorting my tiles and Technic pieces. First the tiles I had the equivalent of more than two large PAB cups of assorted tiles. Here they are Sorted by color, except for jumper plates which are stored together. Nothing groundbreaking here. Here are some of the drawer contents. Everything in it's place. One exception to this organization system is "bulk tiles". For the most part these are tiles that I have gotten from LEGO store PAB, and have more than one large drawer of. Rather than bagging them and storing them like the rest of my bulk brick, they get put in PAB cups and stored on top of the Shelving system that has all the food containers that I use for storing my brick that is not "special" or "bulk". These pieces are often used for parts of MOC's where alot of tiles are used, so being able to bring down a cup and grab them as needed has made for some very easy tiling. Last bit of sorting: Technic I don't build much with Technic, but I have acquired a fair amount over the years. Mostly I use technic bricks to build the minifig shelves that I keep all my minifigs on. I had one of plastic inserts from an advent calendar half filled and a House builder jug filled with technic pieces to sort. Here's the pieces fully sorted. The small pins and such have already been put into drawers with the other "special" pieces. After this, the pieces were sorted out into 12 of the plastic food containers that I use for most of my brick. I dug out the other bionicle pieces I had and they and they nearly filled the house builder jug. I still have one and a half gallon ziploc bags full of technic pieces, but I'm not going to sort them into the general collection yet. They contain most of the pieces for the old technic R2-D2 and Pit Droid, and I haven't decided if I want to keep them in my collection. I'm strongly considering assembling them to check for completeness and then trading them for "regular" LEGO. Well, that's it for now. I've snapped some pictures of details of my storage method that haven't been shown so far, and I'll put those up in a couple days as an overview. Suffice to say, I have completed my project, and almost a week early!!

I just spoke to a LEGO store employee. Here in USA Pirates will be released in LEGO stores the first week of December!! Let's see... One month to drop hints to the wife, then she purchases them, then nearly a month 'til Christmas. It's going to be a long wait!

Definately, but make sure that you spray across the model. When you first press down the spray, you should not be pointed at the model. This will reduce the possiblility of getting splashes or runs.

I went into sorting overdrive on Saturday. Everything is sorted except for Technic pieces and a half bucket of brick that I picked up from a resale shop on Friday. I photographed a few points of the process, I'll put them up later along with pictures of the final result and organization meathods

Basic Brick is DONE!! My wife is at school, so I cranked up the NPR, and buried myself in sorting. Yellow, Tan, and Blue were dispatched in about 3 hours of mad sorting. In an earlier post, I discussed my bulk storage. As that part of sorting is finished, I can now show you a picture of where my bulk brick is stored. Upon counting, I discovered that I have 19 Buckets, Tubs, and Suitcases (all LEGO brand) with bulk brick. In all honesty, this is not the best method. Uniformity (at least in sections) is a good guideline for making a good organization system, and stackable clear plastic containers the size of the blue LEGO Tubs would use space better, and make for easier viewing of the contents. However, I don't care. I like the whimsical and LEGO'ish shapes of various storage conatainers, even if not every tub matches the color of it's contents. Here's a shot of what I have left to sort. Most of it is pre-sorted, but on the far right, you can see a container of unsorted "special" bricks that were taken out of the rest of my collection while I've been sorting. If I can put off household duties on Saturday, I could conceivably make good progress on this this weekend!

Brief update: Grey of all shades is done! However, I misspoke in my previous post, about what colors are left. Thus, Yellow, Blue, and Tan are left, along with the previously mentioned "specials". I'm not sure if it will happen, but I'd like to have all non-special brick sorted by the close of the weekend. I've got some great plans for expansions to "Brickington Island" but I'm trying desperately to hold off until I finish sorting.

If you want to color abs plastic, paint is the way to go. Glossy or soft plastic is hard to paint to. However, there are several paints that are made to adhere to plastic. Krylon fusion is one of them. I've used krylon to paint soft plastic (the kind that army men are made of) which is one of the most dificult plastics to paint, and it sticks very well. It also makes a good base for painting other colors over, though with small LEGO parts too many paint layers could obscure detail. Alternatively, if you use regular model paint, I would recomend a non-acrylic enamel. Also, lightly roughing (deglossing) the surface with steel wool will make the paint adhere better. Sharpies don't color properly, and white out is not at all suitable. Vinyl dye is supposed to be a great option also, but I don't know much about it. A search of some of the minifig customizing forums (EB, minifig customization network, Brickforge, etc) will reveal more info on that.

It looks like you have a fairly good storage system. All your pieces are accessible, and you know where they are, and that's pretty much the goal of storage. Have you considered putting a couple of shelves on the wall over your drawer units? 3 shelves could probably hold all the contaniers that currently reside on the floor, and could probably be purchased at Menards for 30 bucks or so. Thanks for your interest and support. Sounds like you're off to a good start in sorting/storage. Drawers are great, but in the mean time, consider using gallon size freezer bags to separate the bricks within the various drawers of your file cabinet. Folding the bag back on itself results in a flexible container that is half the height of the ziplock, but stays open, and stays upright easily by itself. You can see an example of this in the "second stage sort" picture in my post about black bricks. It's a great cheap way to divide up parts inside a drawer without having to buy additional containers. I'll probably have a better pic of this later on.

Thanks, You're exactly right, and that's one of the main reasons that I ended up going to the system I have now. There are some really tiny pieces (1x1's plates etc.) that are sorted by type, rather than color, but I'll cover that in a later section.

Thanks! Yup, the space constraints are always a limiting factor. My current LEGO building and storage area takes up about 2/3 of our den, which houses my LEGO and my wife's study area. It's an area approximately 10 feet by 7 feet (a bit over 3 meters x 2 meters), which may not seem like much, but it's the better part of a room, and alot of folks don't have that kind of space. As for sorting time, you're correct that it does take longer to sort. Despite this blog, I'm not really a compulsive person. I'm really kind of lazy, and not very good at keeping up with sorting, so each year I seem to end up with one major sorting task. I tried the by-color method, but it was hard to find what I needed, but more importantly it was difficult to gauge how much bricks of various types I had when thinking about future builds. One solution that I tried early on, that may work for some builders with smaller collections, is sorting by color and then dividing by bricks, plates, and "specials". It worked alright for me for a while, and sorting was really quick.

Part 7 Sorting to Storage: Front to Back in Black The sorting continues. Since the last post, I finished sorting red, white and yellow bricks, and I finally got it together and took pics of the process of sorting one color of bricks. Here's the black bricks in a sorting tray. As I mentioned previously, before I sort into storage, I do "second stage sorting". Here the bricks are, separated by type: 1x bricks, 2x bricks, slopes, arches, 1x plates, 2x plates, wing plates, etc. Then the bricks go into the compartments of the food containers that I use for storing most bricks. Some of these compartments have only one type of bricks (i.e. 1x3 plates, 2x8 plates), but most compartments contain a general catagory of bricks (i.e. aircraft tails, 5 high bricks, 45 degree slopes, etc). It looks like alot, but when stacked, it take up very little space. Lastly, when a certain kind of bricks exceeds the amount of volume of the large side of a food container, it gets it's own bag in one of my bulk storage containers. I have 16 LEGO tubs, suitcases and buckets for storing bags o bulk bricks separated by color and type. Of black alone, I have a tub and a bucket containing bags elements. Here's a pic of the tub and some of the bags of elements that are stored in it. There you have the basic method that I follow when sorting a given color of bricks. From the first picture to the end, this process took a little less than 2 hours. This end result of the method is that it is very easy to locate the kind of bricks you require and bring them out (in bags or containers) and leave the rest of the bricks put away. What's next? Well, I'm, past the halfway mark of sorting. Yaay!! However, there are only 16 days left, so now is not the time to slack off. New and old grey, old dark grey, and blue are the only remaining colors to be sorted. Also waiting to be sorted are "Special" bricks that have already been presorted in the catagories of tiles, hinges, windows and doors, arches, architectural pieces, clips and handles, technic pieces and minifig pieces. Nearly all the "specials" will be sorted into drawer organizers, and as I sort each one, I'll try and give a short bit of insight into how they are stored for maximum accessibility for building.

Charming houses. Are there enough variety in LDD For them to be built in other colors?

TLG may have provided some written guidance for some of the smaller figure sets, but TLG wisely left most of it up to the imagination. I have the "Flying Ninja's Castle", and despite the hint in the title, in the flip box packaging they refer to both samurai and ninja as "ninja" and don't even say for certain who the castle belongs to. I think in general it is Ninja vs Samurai, but just like the rest of the assumptions here, it's just that, an assumption. The green are the only ninja that I've ever seen ascribed to the Samurai side, but the joy of LEGO is that so much is left to the imagination. Man I wish i had a green ninja or two...