What were they thinking...?

I would love to be a Lego Master Builder. Working at Lego, designing new models, surrounded by all the Lego I could ever want...

And I know it would not all be glamorous, no job is. But even knowing that and limitations that folks like Ulrik Pilegaard and Mike Mike Dooley talk about in their book "Forbidden Lego", I think it would be awesome for at least a little while to roam the halls of Lego.

Barring that heady experience, I would love to have a few beers with one. Especially the ones that designed the UCS Millennium Falcon, if at the very least to ask a few questions about the design.

Every large set has a few instructions where you kinda pause and scratch your head trying to figure out what designer was trying to accomplish. Usually, fast forwarding a few steps, the puzzling instructions become clear. Every once in while though, you run across things like this:

All for one!

This is the rear of the Millennium Falcon, you can see the transparent blue 1x2 tiles used for the engine exhaust and light gray "Boat Rigging" that wraps around the rear of the ship to make the blue tiles look like they have their own little compartments. Those boat rigging piece connect via 1x1 dark gray tiles with a clip on top (center) and they, in turn, connect to a stack of three 2x3 light gray plates.

Why go with three 2x3 light gray plates when a single 2x3 brick should do the same job? Plates are not three times cheaper (and I doubt they were in 2007 when this set debuted). I cannot see how having a stack of plates would be more structurally sound than a single brick. My best guess is they experimented with a stack of two plates but then decided to bump to three near the end of the process.

Another example from the  UCS Millennium Falcon can be found a bit later while building out the assemblies of the outer hull:

On the left is the underside of one of the hull assemblies. Notice that near the middle you can see a single dark red brick.  

When you attach this assembly, only the top side is visible and what you see is on the right. 

That red brick is now on the inside of the Falcon, in a place where you will never see it. 

The compliment assembly on the other side does not have the red brick.

The Millennium Falcon has several asymmetrical features where one side will have a different color part, or different feature; just like the movie Falcon it is decorated to look patched and modified. So it is not crazy that one side has a random dark red plate that the other does not have. The strange thing is that you will never see it in the completed build!

Again, I think this was probably an oversight. At some point in the build process that part was visible and over the series of design iterations it was covered but never removed or replaced. 

Aberrations like these do not detract from a great set, at most they may cause the builder a few minutes of time as they scratch their head head and think "That's strange" to themselves. In the case of one of the largest and most complex sets offered, you would expect to find a few of these puzzles somewhere in the 300+ pages of instructions. 

And for UCS Millennium Falcon, a ship that is famous for all the quirks resulting from years of tinkering by Han, Chewie, Lando and others, it seems appropriate to have a few oddities built in. 

February order is in!

Steps 71-74 are a bit boring to document with pictures. They all provide external hull plates for the underside of the Millennium Falcon.

The most exciting being step 71 which is in the background of the photo below. It attaches directly under the engines at the rear of the Falcon and has a lot antennas and movable triangular wings ("Angle the defector shield!" perhaps?). The rest are large patches of gray to fill in the gaps underneath.

Steps 71 (background) and 95 (foreground)

Far more exciting is I got the large 4x4 turn table that is the swivel mount for the radar dish (that Lando took out in VI).  This is actually Step 95 but since I had all the other parts I could not resist putting it together.

January's Falcon Order

That's all for January?

Yep.

One of the reasons I am not done after nearly two years is that this project is more about the journey than the destination. That is, I purposely limit myself to budget of X dollars per month and at this point I'm a little over budget.

My goal was to try and get some of more elusive parts, namely the gray-topped levers I need a bunch of. Sadly, after I placed the order the seller connected me to to say that he only had 2 of the promised 10. :(

Oh well, I still got the last of the 1x4 black tiles and the final binoculars I need along with the 10 of quarter circle bricks needed for the rear engine housing.

Better luck February!

December Status for Falcon

Through Step 69

After waiting nearly 3 weeks for all the parts for the Oct/Nov order, I was happily surprised that both sellers filled my Christmas Eve order inside a week!
 
She doesn't look much different right now because the both 68 and 69 add to the underside, but I have turned the Falcon around to get a better view of 68.

Step 68 was more of the underside hull but with a new bit of functionally I was not expecting: a working gangway! There's even some nice detail with what look like hydraulics to rise and lower.

Step 69 was the top and bottom quad laser mounts that set on full working gimbals so they swivel around in all directions. Someone at LEGO really spent a lot of time working this really cool feature out.

It is nice touches like these that can really bring a model to life and up the "WOW" factor.

Bonus!

One of the more unexpected gifts I received this year was this:

One pound of LEGO parts, 13 of which were ones I still needed for the Falcon rebuild! I felt my inner 12 year old rejoice as I dumped the box over and started sorting through this trove. Thanks!

Falcon Progress for Nov/Oct (and Sept)

The last shipment arrived yesterday afternoon so I spent the evening/night anxiously waiting to go into work early and make the additions.

First, I finished the steps left over from the September order where I miscounted a critical part and could not finish. That left me with something that actually looks like the Millennium Falcon:

Progress through step 60, finally!

With that out of the way, I jumped into my main goal: building steps 61-67. Two hours later I'd finished up!

These are all bottom hull coverings and detail steps. The large triangles cover the bottom side of the mandibles, the smaller wedges attach just behind them to provide a little angling for the hull and the tube to the far right is the covering for the bottom half off the starboard access. The four assembles in the middle are detail parts that viable through the circular openings in the hull.

It was not all Skittle-Pooping-Unicorns though: it seems that every month I am destined to either miscount or just plain forget to order a part. This month is was the lowly 2x4 Light Gray Brick, about the most common part in the entire set. Oh well, I improved and have them slated for December's order.

Finally, here is the progress for the Millennium Falcon through step 67:

Progress through step 67!

A long time ago ... (since my last post)

I was pretty excited back in September at receiving two shipments that I thought would allow me to finish up through step 60. Step 60 is important because that is the point that the set goes from looking like a big blob of bricks to looking like Millennium Falcon:

Step 60: Outer Frame Done

Step 56: Blob of Bricks

Turns out that at some point that I miscounted a piece I needed for step 60. As in I had 30 fewer than I thought. 30?! Ug. I have no idea how I screwed up that badly.

"No problem" I thought, "I'll just pick up the missing part in October's order and wait until then to post the update."

It was a great idea, right up until the "Great Daycare Plague" of 2016 (official name, look it up) hit my house and wrecked the chances of me doing anything for a month. If I wasn't sick myself, I was tending to a sick wife and toddler.

Anyway, November rolled in and I decided to just combine Oct and Nov orders not realizing the effects on shipping the impending holidays would cause. Of the 3 orders I placed on Thanksgiving weekend, I have received 2, with promises by USPS that number 3 may arrive today.

Yup. 3 weeks. It is nearly time to make December's order I am still waiting for the last of Oct/Nov.

The good news is that the shipment I got yesterday contained the part I missed counted in September! If all goes well I will finally have pictures of a completed step 60 by lunch!