A new owner for Bricklink

A single news item has for the week: Bricklink has been sold by the former owner Daniel Jezek's family to Jung-Ju “Jay” Kim. You can read the full announcement on The Brothers Brick.

If you consider yourself a LEGO builder, you most likely know what Bricklink is. Otherwise, your first question is: what is it, and why should I care?

Bricklink is an unofficial marketplace for anything related to LEGO including sets and bricks. If you look at any creation on the net, chances are that it contains a significant amount of bricks purchased via Bricklink.

Just a two for this week:

(via The Lego Car Blog)

(via Dieterr89)

News Saturday

There was so much going on in the past few weeks that for today we transform ourselves into a news portal and give you an update about recent happenings.

Competitions:

• As in recent years, the Lego Military Build Competition has started. This years categories do not favor aircraft so much as during the past years, but for sure we will see lots of excellent creations. The first submissions are on the way, the deadline is July 10th.

LEGO products:

• The Architecture line has a new member, the 21018 United Nations Headquarters. Eurobricks has already posted a few hi-res images.
• TechnicBRICKs has covered the full Technic line up for 2H with the B models too. The biggest news is the 42008 Service Truck that stands out from the other sets with its color.

MOCs:

• Mad Physicist continues his coverage of the eighties, this time he built Knight Ridert.
• bobalexander has built this classic light blue Porsche 917 in Gulf livery (via the Lego Car Blog).
• Norton74 is the builder of this Scania truck. (via legozz)
• Sheepo's newest model is a Lotus Sevennel (via the Lego Car Blog).

Porsche love

Lego Porsche was, and I am sure it will be too. But this photo speaks for itself: the expressions of the minifig tell it all, no need to ask who the king of the road is.

This is a Porsche 911 Turbo. I am pretty sure it does not get any smaller or more recognizable than that. A small nit is that the body of the minifig does not fit into the car, but this is a minor detail. On the other hand there are building instructions on mocpages.

Congratulations, ZetoVince!

Lead Sled reverse engineer

I am a big fan of miniscale cars like the ones built by Mad Physicist or the Arvo brothers. The challenge is entirely different compared to building large cars: instead of simply putting bricks on top of each other they require a lot of attention to the details to put everything in place. A special piece or a tricky solution has great impact to the model but it may need a lot of experimentation.

I considered building a replica for myself several times, for example one of the cars made by the Mad Physicist or the Porsche from the Arvos. Our friend the reverse engineer who helps to build the whole thing by looking at the end result only. From Lego bricks, of course.

So far I never got past a couple of thought experiments because apart from obvious details I had no clue how to continue building. But now I have decided to go on with the matter. Mad Physicist has built his '51 Mercury Lead Sled. On one hand looks very desirable, on the other hand it has several detailed photos so that I can have some hope. On top of this Ralph is very helpful and did not object and even gave some clues when I had questions about the details.

I started with Lego Digital Designer. Some bricks are unavailable and even more so some colors, but at least I have infinite supplies. Compared to other virtual building tools it is an important advantage that it models the physics of the bricks and does not let me build stupid things. This is how far I got (click on the album):

The colors are not quite right and some other details like the wheels are different too. But it looks promising. I am truly uncertain about some invisible areas but the external feels right.

When I am done with all details the next step will be Bricklink in the New Year.

Mustang project

Although I am a Technic fan, these days I run into many realistic models. I like cars and aircraft most especially if they are not too large like the mini-Technic models from the Arvos or the cars from the Ralph.

I got so enthusiastic that I started thinking about how I could build something like that. First I considered replicating the excellent Porsche from the Arvo brothers. I did not drop the idea completely but so far it seems to exceed my capabilities. It would take a lot of time to find out how the invisible parts are done and it would take many special bricks like the windscreen ($26 used) or the a rear windows ($15 new), making it expensive.

Building small models leads to different challenges than large ones where the scale gives you much more freedom. With small ones one has to brainstorm about putting each brick to its place, considering different alternatives in many cases. It needs special pieces in unusual colors to return the characteristic features of the original. I have no clue about how pros do it but it seems impossible that they have all the bricks on their shelves in advance in the desired colors (it is worth to take a look at the color chart).

Finally, I have made up my mind. I have decided to try a Ford Mustang convertible (the current one, not the old one). Decisions so far:

• I have many bricks (ask my wife) but not enough. The car will be built solely from newly bought bricks not to limit building. I am also curious how much it will cost. Also, I would like to keep it in one piece forever.
• This makes designing a bit difficult. I have built prototypes for certain parts from the bricks I have but the final car is modeled in LDD because I do not know LDraw very well. LDD also makes some sanity checks like checking if all the bricks are connected.
• The car will be 6 studs wide. This is small but it allows me to use some special parts like the mudguards.

This is where planning is at the moment. There will be some parts that will look different and I will use other colors too. But the basic shape can be seen.



It seems like $40 will cover the financial side. Ordering was a bit complicated because there are some part I could find only at one merchant, so I had to order from 4 different shops to cover everything.

So far so good. When it is ready it will go to brickshelf and of course I will tell you about it on the blog too!

Arvo Porsche

Besides Lego Technic the other thing that gets me excited is realistic and not too big models. Like this from the Arvo brothers:


How much time have they spent to put all the bricks in place? How could they get so many special bricks? And how could they build such a curvy thing from bricks?

And how could I have one too?

Via Brothers Brick.