Bulk Lego Auctions

While Pick a Brick on Lego.com is great for finding those parts you need. It's also very expensive. If you want to add to your Lego collection, and want to do it fast, I mean really fast. Bulk auctions are the way to go.

A set on Lego Shop at home typically runs from 9 to 18 cents a brick. Unless it's an auction I really want, I never pay more than 2.5 cents a brick. More often than not, I pay less than that.
The rule of thumb is, there are 300 bricks on average per pound. At 2 cents a brick, that's $6.00 a pound. At 2.5 cents a brick, that's $7.50 a pound.
The last auction I won, weighed in at a hefty 40 pounds. That's 12,000 bricks! The parts a usually varied in type and color. You'd be amazed at the bricks you get that you never knew existed, or came in a certain color.

For Does and Don't on Bulk Auctions CLICK HERE, or click on the "Pages" link in the upper left corner of this blog.

Lego Construction cabinet

This is version two of my Lego Cabinet. The first one I out grew. For me, this was the perfect solution. No need to unpack all my Lego and then re-pack it once I was done. Just open the doors, start building and close them when I'm finished. Plus all of my Lego that is either work in progress, or being stored remain dust free. And... it keeps small hands away from projects. The construction of the cabinet centered around the work surface, a one inch thick piece of Lexon plastic. The cabinet is 7 feet tall, 8 feet wide, and 4 1/2 feet deep. There's storage on top and to one side. I cut and assembled the entire cabinet from scratch. The bins inside each door were the most time consuming. The main lighting is halogen lights on the top. There is also florescent lighting from below the work surface. Each set of lights can be independently turned on, off, or dimmed. When a bin or drawer gets to full to be useful, I move some of the parts to storage, and mark the container with a sticker so I know there's more elsewhere. I was going to put shelves below the work surface for bins to sit on. That unfortunately would reduce the number of bins I could store. So for now I'm happy with a bit of unorganized storage. I'm not sure of the total weight of the cabinet, but one door empty, weighs around 50 pounds. I've not found a latching system that I like to hold the doors closed, so for now a bungee cord does the trick. Most of what is stored on top is un- opened sets and Lego train related items. The external side storage holds my minifig bins and bulk part storage. Most completed sets are stored on shelves around the room. The red and blue ship in the cabinet is a ship I've been working on for nearly two years. Once finished I'll post some pics of that too.
For more images (CLICK HERE).

Minifig conversion chart

This is a Minifig scale converter. It allows you to convert studs, plates, and bricks to Minifig feet and inches. You can also convert studs to brick, bricks to plates, etc. There are plenty of different scale conversion out there. This one assumes a Minifig is six feet tall. For me the numbers worked out best. The chart is in excel format. If you post it please reference me, thanks.
You can click on the image and print or....
The file can be downloaded by (CLICKING HERE)

Dimension Guides, and drawer labels.

These are some great tools to aid in the construction of your next project. Dimension guide 1 is a stud-length guide for bricks and axles, along with common angels for slopes and connectors. Dimension Guide 2 is a to scale grid that can be used to gauge the size of most plates, bricks, beams, axles, etc. Both these guides are in .jpg format. The parts drawer labels are customizable labels for your Lego collection. The labels are in Corel Draw format, so you'll need either that great program or something that can convert it.

Thanks to Jeff at Onyx for letting me post these. (Here's his site)
The dimension guides are together in a single file, (CLICK HERE)
The parts drawer labels are in one large file (7 Mb) (CLICK HERE)

Fairly odd Bricks

I'm one of those Lego builders that find themselves sitting at the construction table with absolutely no idea what they want to build. When that happens to me, I tend to just start randomly assembling bricks. The above contraption is fairly complex compared to the others, but check 'em out and maybe get a few ideas of your own.
For more odd bricks (CLICK HERE)

Not Lego :(

A few years ago I purchased a large bulk bag of Lego bricks. They were suppose to be 100% Lego. I sorted through the bag and removed a few stray bricks from that other company. The bricks pictured above slipped through my sorting process. Later I built a number of cool items using them. The blue ones have studs on both sides. Lot's of SNOT possibilities. I was always on the hunt for more of them believing they were Lego. I've spent hours on bricklink looking for them. Then I decided to see if I could get a part number off one of them. I was truly disappointed when I read the name "Tyco" clearly printed on the side. These were not Lego! Now I'm not sure about the grey one, but I can only assume that it to is made by that other company. I'm sort of a purist when it comes to Lego, so I don't use them anymore. I just hope that the Lego group one day makes parts similar to these.

Tools of the Brick

These items to an experienced Lego fan are a no brainier. I recently showed someone my Lego room and they had no idea about tools like these. The brick separator is more than a decade old. It is a life saver when it comes to pulling bricks apart. The axle works great for pushing out pins and other stuck items, mainly Technic. The Brick Ruler is a new addition. It's able to quickly measure the number of studs, the height of bricks, the length of an axle, and the length of beams. If anyone has additional tools they use please drop me an email.

Train Shed in Tan

This project came about in an odd sort of way. For whatever reason I took a disliking to the color tan. So, every tan colored brick I got I would store it in a bag. Then when Lego shop at home ran out of 10027 Train Sheds, I was really bummed. So I combined my two problems and this set was the result. This was a interesting project for me. Not only was I working with a limited number of pieces, but a limited number of pieces in a single color (for the most part). The logs in the front are from a couple 10013 Open Freight Wagon sets. It's not as detailed as I would have liked, but I will keep adding to it as those tan pieces add up. BTW, oddly enough the color scheme of the shed matching the passenger car of the Emerald Night set is just a nice coincident. The Shed was 80% complete when that set came out. They do match nicely.
For more images (CLICK HERE)

Heavily Modified 5979

This was the Max Security Transport model 5979. I decided to modify it slightly. I added very few new pieces to the set. If you forgot what the original 5979 looked like it's the last picture in the gallery.
For more images (CLICK HERE).

Little Mechs

These pair of Mechs were part of a much larger MOC. I needed the parts for another project, but I kept these for future ideas.
For more images (CLICK HERE)

Conveyor Belt

This was one of those projects you do just because you feel the urge to. The conveyor belt guides the Zamor Spheres down the first belt. The second belt has two functions: Change the direction of the spheres while lifting them. And line them up single file(which works most of the time.) The spheres get dumped off the end. Eventually I'll add to it and feed the bin at the beginning making a closed loop.
Lego soccer balls are smaller than Zamor Spheres, I placed a dozen or so on the belt and when they hit the corner they went under the plates in the corner. Lego popped apart and flew everywhere. One of those cool, oh crap moments.
For more images (CLICK HERE)

Black Jack

This airplane was created using the small wings from several Batman sets.
For more images (CLICK HERE)