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Hey everybody, my name is Travis Sub and I’ve been an avid Lego enthusiast since childhood. I tend to gravitate towards the Technic sets but if Lego produced I’ll build it. I was recently at the Lego store at Ross Park and saw the most recent Steel City LUG display (space alien chess) and decided to join up.
Welcome, Travis! Have any pics of your builds? Flickr account link, perhaps?
I’ll refer you to this recent post for a quick and likely incomplete rundown of upcoming events you could attend to get to know people!
Thanks Matt. Most of my builds lately have been what was pictured on the box. I haven’t experimented much lately with MOC’s; just having fun with my daughter as she is really getting into building Legos.
Fair enough. We’ll soon rope you into some MOC or another!! But it’s always been participation as you like – we might pressure people a bit, but it’s all in good fun and we all know that family and work life sometimes takes priority!
Currently all the sets I own or organized by set number in bags. I’ve been hesitant to make the jump to bulk sorting, partly because I haven’t found a storage solution i like yet.
I haven’t found a storage solution i like yet.
Welcome, Travis. This is a common and consistent issue among all of us Lego builders. One of the best storage solutions I’ve ever seen was done by Dr. Robert Carney – http://www.carneycastle.com/Storage/index.htm.
His castle site is legendary – http://www.carneycastle.com/index.htm – and he still attends some conventions (his splash page mentions that he will attend Brickworld in Chicago this year – already happened – perhaps @bengood921 saw him or his castles this year?). He was an early inspiration of mine to return to Lego back in the late 1990’s.
That is a serious storage system Tim. I was at Home Depot the other day and saw some Dewalt stackable cases that have various sized boxes that I might try.
You know what, there IS merit to the set storage method. Shifting from known to unknown is tricky. If your interest is set building, I wouldn’t change a thing. However, a move to custom building will require some sort of new storage method, and, in your case, it might be more effective to treat your MOCing bricks as separate from your set packages. Some LUG members do exactly this, even with larger collections, which is even more true when some sets contain unique parts.
My advice for starting a bulk brick storage from scratch is to sort and store by type first and then color. First, later on, it is *much* easier to pick out colors among types of bricks than it is to sort types of bricks out of a single mass of color. Second, starting your storage system by type allows you to make color and shaping swaps more easily as your MOC develops. Sorting by type also gives you an at-a-glance sense of what your broader color combination options are. Existing color proportions within your collection often determine both structure and detail choices. As your MOC brick collection grows, then you can part out sets that you don’t intend to build into it, able to recreate said sets from the online resources. This is how I developed my storage as I came out of my Dark Age, and the transition worked well for me as I bought both sets and bulk brick for MOCing.
I hope this helps.
Feel free to discuss ANYthing involving LEGO here, as we love to share knowledge and help each other create.
Be well, and leg godt!
I’m separating out some 8228 Sting Striker sets bought on Bricklink into my MOC brick after a MOC conversion is complete this week. Knowing that this set was old and rare, I ordered multiples from BrickLink, knowing how spotty this situation can be.
Sure enough, upon delivery, clearly these were cobbled together from loose brick to form these “sets”, and contained incorrect stickering, incorrect part colors, missing stickers, and so on. I remembered your set storage methode, and realized the problems of moving brick between sets and MOCs and back again. Be advised that if you reconstruct sets back into set storage, “don’t be that guy”, more for your own peace of mind than anything else. You’d have to be fairly meticulous in following the parts list for the sets involved, I’d think.
Don’t be afraid to start gathering a MOC brick selection (I recommend the PaB wall and trading with LUG members), and don’t be afraid to break down multiples of a set that you already own. From my perspective, if it isn’t likely to be part of a display, it’s brick better used to create new things.
THAT said, maybe an evolution of a favorite set is the way to go. We did a contest on this a while back, and my entire plan for a Grand Prix racing circuit started off with evolving the 60053 Octan Race Car with the 8131 Raceway Rider that I bought from @joshhall. Now I’m building a full race field of streetable racecars. It’s a lot of fun modding an existing set into a MOC. It’s sometimes easier on part acquisition, and it’s a lot less stress to think about design when most of it for that particular set is already in front of you in real brick.
Opportunities abound with the brick. Explore!
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