[HN Gopher] LEGO Building Instructions
___________________________________________________________________
LEGO Building Instructions
Author : micah_chatt
Score : 312 points
Date : 2023-07-06 14:29 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (archive.org)
| albertopv wrote:
| Amazing! I was thinking just about this a few days ago, my
| daughter got a tons of Lego from hers uncles, of course without
| instructions
| gumby wrote:
| It wasn't until I started buying Lego for myself (in my 20s) that
| I learned that Lego came with instructions. When I was a kid my
| parents would open the box and discard the instructions before
| giving it to me.
|
| Back then (60s/70s) the sets were quite general and open ended.
| Modern day Lego has the thinking done ahead of time, and has too
| many specialised pieces.
| tspike wrote:
| This is definitely a "get off my lawn" comment. Creativity with
| Lego has never been more vibrant. I encourage you to visit your
| local Lego fan convention, or explore one of the many online
| forums where people share their "MOCs."
|
| Those "specialized" pieces are incredible fodder for sculpting.
| Check out newelementary.com to see some examples.
| grigri907 wrote:
| Agreed - the constraints of a limited set of bricks really
| forced creativity.
|
| However, there's been a huge paradigm shift in terms of what is
| "allowed" as far as odd brick placements so the realm of what's
| possible to build has expanded at least as much as the
| inventory of brick options.
| jjallen wrote:
| There's also an app with all of the instructions if that's more
| convenient
| toastandbacon1 wrote:
| So much nostalgia. I remember playing and building with tons of
| Legos back in the day. Then id destroy them and build my own
| stuff.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Now if someone would just make an app that can figure out which
| set my bricks belong to. I have at least two sets that I can't
| find the instructions for, because I have no idea what they're
| called or which number they have. The bricks are fairly unique,
| they can't be in more than 10 sets.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| There are typically numbers somewhere on bricks that you can
| lookup.
|
| Or ... Reverse image search.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I'm sure there was a brick scanning app that appeared a while
| ago, or try and find a number and enter it on Lego site [1],
| otherwise post a picture on BrickLink and I'm sure someone will
| know what it is! Then you can look on BrickLink or Rebrickable
| to find sets that it came from
|
| [1] https://www.lego.com/en-
| gb/service/help/building_instruction...
| tectec wrote:
| Brinklink has list for each brick of the set it belongs too. I
| was able to use that to discover a set I didn't know my older
| brothers had.
| gaazoh wrote:
| You can try to find the parts that stand out on bricklink[0],
| which will point you to the sets they were used in. It's pretty
| quick, once you figure out what the part can be called or what
| category it fits in.
|
| If you can't figure it out, you can ask for help on the
| "bricks" StackExchange site[1].
|
| [0] https://www.bricklink.com [1]
| https://bricks.stackexchange.com/
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I've attempted to find some sets based on a single
| complicated brick and it can be challenging. How do I find
| the "official" name of the brick based on my own vague
| description [0]? What is the true color? How do I find
| special printed bricks? I'm sure with practice it gets
| easier. How open is bricks stack exchange to posting just an
| image of a brick with not much more to go on?
|
| [0]: As an example, here the description of a brick I
| struggled to name. I've since figured it out, but you are
| welcome to guess: flat 4x1 with bumps only on the ends (yes,
| "bumps", because I don't know what the technical term is.
| Again, I'm sure there's a guide or glossary I could find.)
| toast0 wrote:
| > What is the true color?
|
| I have a palette of bricks of known color to calibrate
| against. If you've got a good number of sets, you'll likely
| start to accumulate things that are only in a few colors.
| If possible, it's nice to switch those up with a 1x2 brick
| in that color for consistency and because the 1x2s are
| stable on the large area maps.
|
| > As an example, here the description of a brick I
| struggled to name. I've since figured it out, but you are
| welcome to guess: flat 4x1 with bumps only on the ends
| (yes, "bumps", because I don't know what the technical term
| is. Again, I'm sure there's a guide or glossary I could
| find.)
|
| You kind of work up to it. There are _very_ small and hard
| to read numbers on a lot of the parts that helps sometimes.
| Searching for 1x4, ignore printed parts, shows 230 parts on
| rebrickable (other sites may vary), looking through all
| those pictures gets me to "Plate Special 1 x 4 with 2
| Studs" [1]. I don't think there's a brick like this, or I
| can't find it, just the plate; but then you didn't know the
| magic terminology that the flat pieces (1/3rd height) are
| plates, not bricks. Had I properly interpreted your
| description, I'd have jumped to the plates, special
| category, and skipped the search.
|
| [1] https://rebrickable.com/parts/92593/plate-
| special-1-x-4-with...
| photonerd wrote:
| Probably an age thing, but I've never understood the point of
| Lego instructions. Or the sets.
|
| The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove
| that & it's dull as hell. It just becomes model building with
| poor quality models as the result.
|
| I'm happy _other_ people find it fun, but to me it misses the
| entire point in favor of weak licensed "kits".
| dsr_ wrote:
| My own take:
|
| Some people want to play with playsets. Some people want to
| display models. Some people want to create art. Some people
| want to construct machines. Some people want to assert
| allegiance. Some people want to collect.
|
| All of these aims are valid. The diversity of ways to buy LEGO
| supports them all, while maintaining a high-quality, largely
| compatible, reasonably consistent medium.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| In recent years, there is a general drift towards
| "collectible display models". This means that the piece count
| in most sets is inflated by a majority of small "finishing"
| pieces. The models are finicky to build with lots of unusual
| building techniques (attaching bricks on sidewalls, for
| example) and are not easy to repurpose into something else in
| a reasonable amount of time.
|
| In the 1990s, it was a "construction toy" first, playset
| second, display model last. A kid could take any set and
| rebuild it into something else in an hour or so. Now, they
| would need more time only to sort the tiny 1x1 pieces before
| starting to build anything.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| The 1x1 sticker tiles sort themselves by granular
| convection [1] to the bottom of a Rubbermaid tote just like
| the sunflower seeds in a snack mix. In our house, they
| frequently get neglected except as gems/coins/treasure to
| fill a pirate chest. The large plates and bricks float to
| the top during shaking and digging.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granular_convection
| lacksconfidence wrote:
| Personally I find the display models awesome. I'm not a big
| lego fan but the apollo rocket was nifty so I built it and
| put it on display.
| lukas099 wrote:
| Sounds like a greater diversity of pieces for free-play
| construction to me.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| See, I love all those detail bits. I love to make tiny,
| intricate models that say a lot in a small space. I love
| grabbing a couple of random gribbly bits, sticking them
| together, deciding they look like the beginning of
| something, then sticking on more bits to make it more like
| the thing.
|
| The "voxel sculpture" style where you just stack (mostly)
| rectangular bricks into a shape is perfectly valid, but
| it's less interesting to me personally.
|
| Modern Lego supports both. Both are valid. They still sell
| big brick buckets, and no one's stopping you from buying
| one of those and doing your thing.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| What I'd really like to see is a "brick bucket" that
| contains mostly large bricks and maybe a few doors,
| windows, and slanted tiles. I'm all for gribbly bits, but
| it seems harder to accumulate a good collection of the
| basics these days - because the big "brick buckets" you
| describe are probably half gribbly bits. In my experience
| as a kid, what we really wanted was enough mass to build
| walls and houses and forts, and were not as interested in
| small detail stuff.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Set 10698. 790 pieces, $35 at amazon.
|
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-large-creative-
| brick...
| epiccoleman wrote:
| That looks pretty good actually, but now I'm going to
| move the goalposts and wish for a similar box with less
| color variety so that you can build, for example, a white
| house with a red roof, instead of having to cobble
| together various colors.
|
| Still though, I just might have to top off the kids
| collection with one of these boxes. Good find.
| rkangel wrote:
| > In recent years, there is a general drift towards
| "collectible display models"
|
| I think there is an actually an "addition" here rather than
| a change. You're an adult conversing with adults (I assume)
| and therefore the discussions you have and the marketing
| you see are more about sets targeted to AFOLs (Adult Fans
| of Lego).
|
| The classic Lego childhood lines (Lego City) still exist
| and still work just as well for play and creative
| construction as they ever did - and they don't use a lot of
| 1x1s. It's just that we've _also_ gained these new lines of
| large adult sets that never used to exist.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| Even the vehicles in 5+ City sets are affected by this
| trend. It takes about 50 parts stacked in intricate ways
| just to build the base chassis structure of a van, for
| example.
|
| In the 1990s, Town vehicles were 4-stud wide and didn't
| focus on the small detailing. The instructions for the
| original vehicle were just a single sheet of paper with
| less than 20 steps. You could build the original vehicle
| by memory after having built it a couple of times with
| instructions. The back of the box suggested alternative
| builds, which, although looking "imperfect" were a solid
| base for imagination.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Those complex sets are great for stimulating certain
| types of spatial reasoning, perseverance, and fine motor
| skills. My four year old went from 'building a tractor
| (60287) with dad helping' to 'building 5+ kits all by
| himself'.
|
| The kits don't stop him from just building his own stuff
| either. The two forms of play seem complimentary.
| rkangel wrote:
| There is a good range of "3-in-1" sets that are good at
| starting kids off building the same bricks into multiple
| models: https://www.lego.com/en-gb/themes/creator-3-in-1
|
| Once they've got a few sets like that, the rebuilding
| into unspecified stuff seems to come naturally (at least
| with the cousins and friends kids I've played with).
| zgluck wrote:
| Lego nailed it in 1980 with the 8860 Auto Chassis, IMO. It
| does all of those things in a nice balance with piece count
| of 662 (for a 57 cm long car) and IMO still ends up looking
| better than today's 3000 piece models.
|
| http://www.technicopedia.com/8860.html
| thirteenfingers wrote:
| I personally agree about the whole point of Lego being free
| form building - and I still have some Lego magazines from the
| days when that was explicitly encouraged by Lego - but you
| _need_ kits and instructions to get to the point where you can
| do free form building. It 's like composing music, you're going
| to have a very difficult time of it if you don't first study a
| whole lot of existing, well-constructed music.
| photonerd wrote:
| I mean... I didn't. At all. So I'd dispute the "need", tho
| it's of course a learning option I guess.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| The fun of building new sets off instructions is the
| satisfying-ness. You know the instructions are correct, that no
| pieces are missing and all pieces click together satisfyingly
| into the result, that looks and feels nice. Each click is
| satisfying.
|
| It is a whole lot different from tinkering with arduino
| hats/sw, as frustration can creep in if things don't work as
| expected.
| lubesGordi wrote:
| Yeah we never had sets or instructions as a kid (of the 80s).
| But now doing sets it's pretty relaxing, fun, easy. It's a
| puzzle. Eventually everything ends up in a heap like other
| comments mention. I imagine once the heap is big enough we'll
| go back to creative free form building with the variety of
| generic and tailored pieces we've accrued.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Free building is great, but my experience is that my young son
| _also_ wants to build his sense of competence - following the
| steps correctly, fixing mistakes, and making something exactly
| like the picture. Sure, he plays with it for a minute and then
| tears it apart to make something original - but, like you said,
| that's the beauty of Lego.
| xdrosenheim wrote:
| The whole point of LEGO is to "LEg GOdt" (Play great/good/well,
| however you want to translate that).
| stinkytaco wrote:
| I like both. I think Lego sets are in many ways my first
| experience of technical documentation and I still use those
| skills. It also helped me learn about how sets went together so
| I could design my own. Finally, I wanted to play with what was
| on the box.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Why did you buy the specific kit just to build your own stuff?
| The process of going thru the process and the satisfaction of
| finishing is rewarding
| photonerd wrote:
| I didn't. That's my point. Kits were rare (usually just
| suggestions with a slight subset of blocks) and most "sets"
| were 100s of pieces & so infinite options to build.
|
| Now that's still available but VERY much tertiary.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| I'm with you. I remember my childhood experience with Legos. Me
| and a friend down the road would drag out this big bucket full
| of random stuff. We'd build forts, and then crazy many-wheeled
| trucks that would assault them.
|
| The whole thing was about those designs just springing from the
| imagination, and I really don't get what fun building toward a
| prescribed design would be, especially since it's so low
| fidelity.
| photonerd wrote:
| Right, exactly.
|
| Like I understand the appeal of model building but Lego
| models aren't very good models & look like ass compared to
| (often a lot cheaper) model kits.
| lfowles wrote:
| It gives you a core set of patterns for going off on your own
| and building. Think of it as lego practice that shows you a
| neat model at the end you can then scrap :)
| jedberg wrote:
| The purpose of the instructions is to learn the techniques.
| First you build with the instructions, then you tear it apart
| and build what you want.
|
| Not everyone is into the instructions -- my daughter follows
| them meticulously and will only build with instructions. My son
| refuses to follow instructions and will only "master build".
|
| When I was a kid I'd build with the instructions, and
| eventually I destroyed everything and built a whole city from
| scratch.
|
| Every kid is different.
| roryisok wrote:
| Growing up, myself and my siblings built sets when we first got
| them as gifts, but after that they went in the pile. We would
| build whatever was in our imagination, from the multicolored
| heap.
|
| Now I have my own kids, and they all want to build sets from
| instructions. The odd time we'll dive into the pile of orphaned
| bits and build a house or a boat or something, but mostly they
| want to recreate what they remember. My wife spends hours
| finding all the pieces of a set and bagging them up for the
| kids to build later (so she's gonna love this)
|
| It's tempting to say "kids nowadays" but I think it's just
| different personality types. In other media, my kids are far
| more creative and imaginative than I ever was, but with Lego
| sets they prefer to recreate the perfect image than make a
| hodge podge thing that never existed.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| For us growing up, the point of the sets was that you got a
| cool spaceship or whatever, which you would put your personal
| Lego guy into, park near your "base", and play with until some
| other project demanded the parts. Then it would be disassembled
| mercilessly and consigned to the bin as grist for the
| constantly evolving construction project laid out on our much-
| abused air hockey table.
|
| If a set was a particularly cool build, we might disassemble it
| and then rebuild it - but most of the time, once something got
| taken apart, no one was ever going to bother trying to
| reconstruct it from the manual, since doing so would have
| involved finding all 500 necessary pieces in the mega-bin.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Aimed more at adults, but the Architecture Studio was intended
| to be more free-form:
|
| https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/studio-21050
|
| There are no 'models' to build, and the "instructions" that
| come with it are more a discussion of architectural principles,
| as adapted for Lego as needed.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Neither did I till I had a kid. My kid loves following
| instructions, builds a set a few times, then he goes into
| creative mode and builds his own way. Instructions helped my
| kid learn the basics of instruction following which is a good
| skill to have for a 5 year old.
| photonerd wrote:
| Yeah I have a 2 yr old & larger blocks. He's all about free
| building atm.
| mcphage wrote:
| > The whole point of Lego was creative free form building.
| Remove that & it's dull as hell.
|
| The point is that Lego can be played with in a bunch of ways.
| It's parts that you can do whatever with, and it has
| instructions for one or more models that you can make. Some
| people like the sheer possibilities of making things up, and
| some people find that daunting. Lego supports both, and
| anything in between.
|
| Following the instructions does teach you techniques that you
| can use on designing your own builds. It's a way to learn from
| experts.
| photonerd wrote:
| > The point is that Lego can be played with in a bunch of
| ways.
|
| Indeed: the exact opposite of a set of instructions &
| specific, custom produced, build pieces.
| mcphage wrote:
| > specific, custom produced, build pieces
|
| How they reuse molds in Lego models is crazy. I have a
| model with a pagoda, that uses bananas for the points on
| the eaves. My favorite is the orchid model, where the
| smaller orchid blossoms are demigorgon heads from the
| Stranger Things sets.
| XCSme wrote:
| It's like assembling Ikea furniture. Some people like it.
| photonerd wrote:
| I like model building. But Lego models are not very good
| models
| swayvil wrote:
| I agree.
|
| It's like painting by numbers. Or drawing from one of those
| "how to draw a pirate" instructional guides.
|
| It's a completely different thing.
|
| I know a guy who prefers the instructions. He builds them and
| then keeps them on display, on shelves and such.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I love following instructions. It's so relaxing for me to just
| follow without having to figure anything out. Building my own
| stuff with Lego would be a completely different thing and I
| never enjoyed that, probably because I'm not very good at it.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| I am in-between - so, the way I used instructions was for ideas
| on how things could be put together that were "non-obvious".
|
| I would build it once, then play with that model for a bit,
| then deconstruct it, put it into my box of loose LEGO and then
| build whatever I wanted - sometimes it would look similar, but
| it was never the same way twice.
|
| I fail to understand expensive sets that get built and sit on
| shelves or in glass enclosures... Might as well break out the
| Kragle (I think many people failed to see the point of that
| movie...)
| hugi wrote:
| I'm in my early forties but I still grew up with instructions
| and sets. Usually I'd assemble a set and probably learn a thing
| or two along the way, then I'd tear the sets down and build
| stuff myself.
|
| As a father of three, that's exactly how I see my kids using
| the sets today. The sets get built once, then they get torn
| down and the bricks get reused.
| JNRowe wrote:
| I sincerely applaud _everything_ ending up on IA. However, if you
| 're searching for specific instructions brickinstructions is
| excellent as it is far more navigable. For a random example see
| Starguider1. I wonder if someone has already scraped that site
| for IA, beyond simply praying to the Wayback Machine.
|
| 1 https://lego.brickinstructions.com/m/lego_instructions/set/6...
| el_benhameen wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this. I'm going to show it to my 6 year
| old and he's going to lose his mind. Great way to make use of
| my massive box of childhood legos and empty summer hours.
| bombcar wrote:
| There is/was a website where you could upload all your parts
| and it would tell you what you could build.
| dunham wrote:
| There is a app for that too, which works off of a photo of
| your parts: https://brickit.app/
| tspike wrote:
| Rebrickable. Very much still alive.
| internetter wrote:
| Yes, we archived the entire thing in 2020[0] (~100gb). Maybe
| it's worth running again.
|
| [0]: https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/job/avlad
|
| Edit: What this means is you can open any* link to
| lego.brickinstructions.com and see it in the wayback machine
| (IA ingests these archives)
|
| *maybe not the mobile view you linked, not links after the job
| ran, not pages that couldn't be found in a crawl
| JNRowe wrote:
| That is great. I could see a lot it was in the wayback
| machine, but I have no idea what the pipeline for that is.
| Poking around from your link was informative, thanks!
| kazinator wrote:
| When brickinstructions goes belly up, or just messes up its
| URLs for shits and giggles, you will need to go through
| archive.org to find out what used to be at that URL.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| Wow, that just gave me a crazy flash of nostalgia. I think I
| must have had this set, or at least a very similar one.
| kevinob11 wrote:
| Whoa, WHOA, I could never have named or described this but it
| suddenly felt like I was 8 hoping for specific christmas
| gifts again.
| lukebbutton wrote:
| Same, it hit hard
| fxtentacle wrote:
| me too :)
| rhplus wrote:
| I'm surprised there's no copyright notice on these instruction
| booklets. Has LEGO ever stated that their booklets are freely
| reproducible or is this a gray area?
|
| Note: I'm talking about the layout and graphics of the booklets
| themselves, not the logical instructions (i.e. recipe book versus
| recipes).
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| This is a great reminder for parents of lego-addicted kids to get
| their into STEM by entering in FRC. It starts early, with legos!
|
| https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/fll
| sxp wrote:
| For modern sets, you can also get a PDF from the official site:
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/buildinginstructions/7622...
|
| One of these days, I want to learn enough computer vision to
| write an LEGO instruction booklet to LCAD convertor that could be
| fed old instructions and generate a 3D model of the set. An
| archive of the instructions is nice, but a virtual archive of
| sets would be nicer.
| xp84 wrote:
| Then feed that model into a 3d printer and archive your built
| sets immutably in meatspace! :D
| bryanmgreen wrote:
| Over the last several years I've made a habit of downloading PDF
| manuals for many things I own and saving them in a Google Drive
| folder for safe-keeping.
|
| You never know when you need one until you do and it's a
| nightmare if you lost it!
| jordij1 wrote:
| My manuals are sorted in folders by maker / brand name.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Internet Archive is a great resource, but man the interface
| sucks. Part of it's because there's no good way browse online,
| and part of it is because the search is broken. Indexing so much
| data in such diverse formats with questionable or missing
| metadata is hard. I'd love a better interface, but I also suspect
| that a crappy interface is what help IA stay alive. There's
| plenty of legally questionable data hosted there if you know
| where to look.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The crowd who like Lego May also enjoy the tv series Lego Masters
| (and it's versus regional versions). Some of the builds are
| actually amazing.
| OliveMate wrote:
| My old man recently got a bunch of boxes from my childhood out of
| his, including multiple tubs of mixed Lego and a box of
| incomplete instructions. This will prove to be a valuable
| resource in the coming months, thank you very much!
|
| I keep staring at all the artwork included on some of the early
| Bionicle instructions and I love that dark mysterious island
| aesthetic.
| roryisok wrote:
| Lego themselves have an archived copy of every instruction set
| going back to the 80s, available here - https://www.lego.com/en-
| us/service/buildinginstructions
|
| But for whatever reason, the scans are poor quality and very
| dark, and it can be hard to make out what piece is which. These
| ones look much better
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Lego themselves have an archived copy of every instruction
| set going back to the 80s, available here -
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/buildinginstructions
|
| Since can't be true: I am _very_ certain that there exist Lego
| Technic models from before 1996, which is the oldest year that
| can be selected.
| gleenn wrote:
| I was sad not to see the original Technic Super Car. It had a
| working V8, 4 wheel drive with 4 wheel steering and 3 way
| differential, and even an actual gear box with shifter. You could
| see the pistons pump when you pushed it around. One of the best
| birthday presents I ever asked for.
| netsharc wrote:
| The 8880: https://brickset.com/article/20017/8880-super-car-
| the-best-e...
| MisterTea wrote:
| That was a great set - it also featured double wishbone
| suspension supported by spring struts.
| marceldegraaf wrote:
| That was an amazing set. The first one I bought from my own
| hard-saved cash as a kid. Really fun to build and amazing (and
| informative) to see the working steering, differential,
| suspension, and gear train assemblies.
|
| I have this set laying around, mostly complete. Should really
| rebuild it someday!
| xdrosenheim wrote:
| Do you know the set number? There is a "Super Car" in Technic
| with set number 8070, available in the archive. Not sure about
| the steering and differential, but it seems to feature a V8 and
| a stick shift.
| amelius wrote:
| It would be nice to have 3D models of these, so I can play with
| them without shelling out $$$.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| My kids being 4 and 6 means we're full into Lego. I grew up with
| two brothers so we have like three hundred pounds of it. But lost
| most of the instructions.
|
| It's been amazing to go online and find any instruction and re-
| assemble these kits.
|
| It also made me realize something: half the value of buying a kit
| these days is that you aren't spending hours finding needles in a
| 300lb haystack.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| You need a rule that you cannot mix more than 2000 pieces from
| different kits. Basically 1/3 of those organizer boxes. A
| balance between search ability and organization, otherwise you
| get in these situations where it's not feasible to rebuild a
| kit that you have, it's like mixing different engine parts and
| expect to build that same engine
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > ...half the value of buying a kit these days is that you
| aren't spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack.
|
| My guess is that is why techies keep inventing their own Lego
| sorting machines
| omoikane wrote:
| > you aren't spending hours finding needles in a 300lb
| haystack.
|
| I guess that's for people who have a specific thing in mind
| that they wanted to build. I find a lot fun just picking out
| random pieces and then thinking about where to attach them
| afterwards.
| cortesoft wrote:
| My kids never want to build the instruction versions, they only
| want to make their own designs.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| > It also made me realize something: half the value of buying a
| kit these days is that you aren't spending hours finding
| needles in a 300lb haystack.
|
| It's a bit of work but I found enjoyment in sorting my old
| childhood Lego. Don't do colors, do categories (bricks, slopes,
| plates, etc). Once done, I could complete my old childhood
| models even faster than the unsorted ones you buy new. It also
| lowers the threshold to break it down and build something else
| since it's so easy to find the parts. On the downside, it takes
| more space than a single bin.
| pbronez wrote:
| Absolutely categories are better than colors. It doesn't LOOK
| as pretty but it's way more functional.
| samstave wrote:
| >>* _half the value of buying a kit these days is that you
| aren't spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack.*_
|
| Are you NUTS?
|
| Are you trying to shame my 1980s values with LEGO?
|
| "I KNOW that FN piece is in here!!!! I JUST SAW IT!!!!"
|
| You're robbing your kids of a life lesson. and better image
| recognition, memory, sorting processing thoughts, etc.
|
| There are so many lessons embedded in working with LEGO that
| can only be learnt through the frustration of a F-ton of brix
| in a bin and your looking for that specific 1x2 -- or worse
| yet, 1x1 smooth piece.
|
| I used to buy things in bulk from LEGO at the mall in San Jose
| and just have bins of smooth pieces and other were parts...
| usefulcat wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but in a large pile, finding the
| right piece is easily 10x harder now because the number of
| unique LEGO parts is much, much higher than when you and I
| were kids.
| samstave wrote:
| Ah, I mis-interpreted that.. and I agree. I hate the
| custom/uniques that lego builds with some lame co-branding
| like a movie with DC/Marvel....
|
| Lego is by default the foundationaly builing block.
|
| I HATE custom pieces to a lego set.
| kroltan wrote:
| > It also made me realize something: half the value of buying a
| kit these days is that you aren't spending hours finding
| needles in a 300lb haystack.
|
| What! That is the best part!
|
| Wading through a mound of Lego has to be one of the most
| satisfying sounds I know, the clatter of a bajillion pieces of
| precision plastic, each with their different cavities and
| sonority, moving around each handful you scrape off to the
| side... Good times.
|
| In the rare occasion I get a Lego set nowadays (no kids yet),
| the first thing I do is open every bag of pieces into a tray so
| I can do it on a smaller scale.
| mirkules wrote:
| > no kids yet
|
| You will know no fury as when your kids intentionally mix up
| all the pieces for fun. We have hundreds of LEGO people, and
| my kids intentionally dismembered them into their individual
| pieces (including HANDS!). But how can you get angry at kids
| playing??? _twitch_
| jmmv wrote:
| It sounds like you should watch The Lego Movie (:
| BanazirGalbasi wrote:
| I think having sets that you like to keep together and
| you don't want to mix up is fine. Too many people saw the
| Lego Movie and took it to mean that keeping sets as sets
| is bad. Note that the person you responded to isn't
| stopping their kids even as they cause more destruction
| than the Lego Movie showed, they're simply complaining
| about it here because what _they_ had is gone.
|
| Yes, let kids mix and match and play. But also
| acknowledge that we all play differently, and for some
| people having a model of something that they built is
| where the fun lies. People who like organization can
| still have fun, let's not shame them for their
| preferences.
| nimajneb wrote:
| My daughter will be getting her own Lego and possibly a
| selection of mine. I organized mine for the first time in
| my life last year. Some of the sets I've had since the very
| late 80s and early 90s. Those aren't getting lost :P
|
| She can play with them supervised, but she'll have her own.
| This is all assuming she's even interested, she's only 2 so
| who knows yet.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Mine is also two and really into Duplo, so Lego will be a
| natural progression, especially considering that the
| blocks are compatible, so I wholeheartedly recommend it.
|
| Also some the ones she's playing with are currently over
| 30 years old and still going.
| davely wrote:
| > Wading through a mound of Lego has to be one of the most
| satisfying sounds I know
|
| My friend, let me introduce you to this Spotify playlist:
| LEGO White Noise [1]
|
| [1] https://open.spotify.com/album/6qZUya0mkucuxvoIp4akVT?si=
| RgH...
| fluxinflex wrote:
| That made my day! That's soooo incredibly unbelievably
| mindnumbingly stupid that I love it :+1:
| gertlex wrote:
| I recently had the realization... I've carried this enjoyment
| onwards into how I store parts for hobbies. While I use
| compartmentalized containers for things, compartments are
| still a mix of parts. I can search for quite a while without
| getting frustrated, just knowing, "those servo mounting
| brackets are in one of these two containers in the garage..."
|
| I don't buy or aspire to own new Lego as an adult, but I'm
| still basically doing the same thing I did as a kid: every
| time I decide to do a hardware project is me digging through
| my bins of assorted parts instead Lego parts.
|
| Oh and of course, my desk is perpetually just as messy as the
| floor was as a kid, and I'm often fidgeting seeing how random
| things do/don't fit together.
|
| (also, also... building the set? nah, building my own things
| without instructions, and similarly writing my own code...)
| pbronez wrote:
| Agree! My partner disagrees though. She wants the LEGO
| organized by color or set. I find this blasphemous. It's
| legit harder for me to find pieces when they're sorted like
| this. My brain is tuned with specialized LEGO bin stirring
| techniques that reliably turn up what I need... but that
| doesn't work at all when the piece has been squirreled away
| where it "belongs"!
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| There's someone who's really into knolling
| (https://knolling.org/what-is-knolling) and hates this
| comment.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Always Be Knolling.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Wading through a mound of Lego has to be one of the most
| satisfying sounds I know
|
| There are two sounds I associate with Lego. The one you
| describe and the other.
|
| The words you can find and the tone you utter them with when
| you unexpectedly stand on a piece, or even better, when you
| kneel on a bit when trying to find the tv remote.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| The sound of swishing through a mound/box/bin of LEGO has to
| be the most relaxing thing for me ever...
| bombcar wrote:
| The word 'Gruschteling' is a German word used by German
| Lego fans. It is used to describe the distinctive sound
| made when you sift through a large bucket of Lego, trying
| to find the right piece.
| lukebbutton wrote:
| My grandfather used to say that whenever we played lego
| as kids
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I looooove that sound. But with young kids there's no point
| trying to sort. And without sorting, every piece takes a
| while to find.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| One of my "core memories" wrt Lego is meticulously
| spending days sorting small parts into some of those
| Sterilite multi-drawer things and then knocking it over,
| spilling all my hard work onto the floor and undoing it.
|
| I was probably 8 or 9. From that point on, fuck it, they
| all go in one big box. My brothers and I would compete to
| see who could find the most valuable pieces. Mostly
| treasure chest coins, little gems, and basically anything
| translucent qualified - transparent single stud pieces,
| cone pieces, and lightsaber beams were very high value,
| since one could not build a respectable Lego sci-fi
| arsenal without all of them.
| kroltan wrote:
| Ha! That was a common competition between me and my
| friend around that age too.
|
| He is very fortunate to be part of a reasonably affluent
| family, so he had like 6 60-liter boxes full of assorted
| Lego.
|
| We would spill a couple at a time (who am I kidding we
| spilled all of them) on the floor, when the flow of
| pieces stopped, the game was on! So many arguments about
| the nature of the simple shapes, like "oh no this isn't a
| blue lightsaber, it is a cylinder of _pure diamond_! "
| dsr_ wrote:
| My wife says that sound means that I'm happy and relaxed.
| kevmarsden wrote:
| I'm totally the opposite. That sound is grating to me. But
| I'm sensitive to other sounds too, so it's not just LEGO.
| celticninja wrote:
| Get the brickit app, saves some time
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'll have to check it out again. Last time it looked like it
| wanted a subscription.
|
| I would just like to pay once for an app that 100% offline
| scans for blocks. Let me pick an instruction book and begin
| pointing out pieces to me that belong in the set.
|
| Fingers crossed.
| marak830 wrote:
| I disagree. A whole bunch about Lego is the search. I was
| recently reintroduced by my son (5) and the fun of searching
| for what we want to try to complete a build - and
| occasionally redesigning due to what we find - is amazing.
|
| Also helps him learn to adjust on the fly, which is a great
| thing to learn at a young age.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I have been building with my 6yo, and he has the
| traditional giant bin where all the sets of Creator pack of
| assorted bricks, plus the sets from Ninjago and Spider Man
| and Minecraft and various cars and so on all get
| disassembled after about 3 days for him to dig through.
|
| More recently, I also got out my old boxes of Knex, which
| I'd put away a decade ago by sorting the parts by color
| into about a dozen quart-size ziploc bags (there are far
| fewer variants of Knex than of Lego, even ignoring the
| myriad custom tiles and stickers). He was THRILLED to have
| them all sorted, and for more than a month now - probably a
| dozen sessions of use - has put them back in the right
| bags. It's like pulling teeth to get him to keep his art
| supplies organized, those can just be piled in a heap, it
| can take two hours for him to do his laundry, typical
| playtime with friends is an explosion of toys from bins,
| but it is critical that the Knex go in the right bag even
| during use.
|
| After seeing that, I got a compartmentalized organizer that
| used to hold fishing tackle, dumped all the tackle in the
| big tackle box, and washed it, and he has been keeping "the
| good Legos" in that. If you're curious, it turns out that
| the good Lego are the wheels, propellers, blocks with pins
| to connect to those wheels and propellers, the Technik
| couplers, the Ninjago transparent flames, especially the
| Ninjago spring-loaded bolt gun thing, and the Minecraft
| character heads Not the character bodies, not the Iron Man
| head, not even the ones that look like him and Mom and Dad,
| just Minecraft heads - everything else can go in the bin. I
| think he made a good selection, builds just seem to go
| together faster when those parts are available. In
| particular he used to need help on occasion to find the
| right wheels - everything seems to need wheels - and now he
| has them.
|
| God I hope he's more organized and tidy than me.
| chias wrote:
| Oh man, this sent me down a trip to memory lane. I had a lot of
| the Spyrius set as a little kid, and I loved them to bits. I just
| looked up how much they'd cost to buy them again, and they're
| like $1000 a pop :o
| endemic wrote:
| nostalgia is a helluva drug
| aeneasmackenzie wrote:
| You may be able to (entirely legally) part out the sets on
| bricklink, buy the generic bricks from webrick, and buy the
| specific bricks from bricklink sellers. This will be
| substantially cheaper and it's an onboard into non-Lego
| building bricks which have gotten really good in the last few
| years. The glut of vendors selling copied Lego sets has given
| the field a bad name, but the brick design is out of patent and
| there are many sellers designing their own sets as well as
| selling MOCs.
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