A Big Step: T plus 30 Hours

A day and a bit later, and I`m amazed to say the sorting of my ancient Lego bricks is as good as done.  I have only two baskets from that `swivle tower` I posted yesterday to go, but I have a problem right now as I`m running out of plastic containers to store them in, and don`t want to go use cardboard containers as these ones stack better.

The solution?  I`m going to try and build some of the older sets in order to `remove` some bricks from all the containers into the models, and hopefully can get the remaining bricks in the boxes that way.

I tried my hand already on one of the classics, set 6890, the Cosmic Cruiser I also showed yesterday.  The set is from 1982 (I was like 4 back then!!!) and I always loved the model.  Don`t ask me why, but when I was a kid I thought he was one of the Thunderbirds vessels, probably the fact it has an auxiliary vehicle comming out of it like Thunderbird 2 had...

Now this was old school building, the actual build only took like half an hour, but I spend more then an hour and a half rummaging through all the boxes for the needed bricks.  You must realise, back then the building instructions (you can get the all Lego booklets scanned on this site) didn`t have an inventory of bricks to be used.  Nor did they have numbered bags like now.  Nor did they show what bricks where needed in each step.

So you have to analyze the plan before you go looking for the parts, trying to remember as good as you can while going through your boxes (and back then, those used to be big cardboard boxes with everything just tossed in, at least now I had it all sorted by colour) and look at times for ages for a certain brick (and usuall, that peticuliar one was never to be found).

I had it happen as well with this vessel.  I couldn`t find the second blue sidebrick with the black markings printed on, probably ended in a lawnmower or vacuumcleaner two decennia ago, so you will need to improvise, in this case a non printed blue brick.

This is what makes Lego so fun for me, and I think makes it a great educational toy.  You need to think and sort problems as you go instead of all those modern straight from the box, don`t dare to mix and match my collection, and look the plan says this as this generation is used to.  I know, I saw it with the Little Munchkin as well, I think he is going to flip out should I print him a plan and say "look kid, built this.  Search and keep searching for the needed bricks.  Don`t find them?  Use a different colour, but please try to keep the colours together as I spend a day and a half sorting them hehehe".

Which mind you doesn`t mean I don`t like the present day Lego kits.  Actually, I adore them, they are drop dead gorgeous (and I`m going to build me a trio of Atlantis kits this evening as we speak... well, after pizza, I don`t feel like cooking after all day sorting Magic cards and Lego bricks), it`s just at times, the old-fashioned way has a more satisfying feeling to it when completed succesfully!

Until next time, ciao ciao!