Category: Crafts

Star Destroyer

  • March 10, 2024

Yesterday I made this Star Destroyer:

It’s a cardboard model kit, and only cost $20. The reviews were good and I was looking forward to seeing what it looked like assembled.

First impressions are excellent. A 30 page manual, 16 ‘runners’ with over 200 pieces printed on thick card that punched out easily. It even comes with glue that the manual says is only required if the connections were loose.

The print detail was excellent, and the pieces are clearly marked making assembly – at least initially – fairly easy. I could have done without punching out the hundreds of tiny slots though!

It’s a massive model, and very sturdy. Assembly up until the point in the above pic wasn’t too difficult, but after this things changed a lot. Putting the main hull pieces onto the superstructure was an exercise in frustration, since it was extremely difficult getting the tabs lined up.

The hinged pieces I think could have been better designed as well. Far too often the print separated from the backing revealing the cardboard as seen above. I probably could have fixed these easily with a bit of glue, but I didn’t care enough.

The spherical parts were almost impossible to correctly assemble. The design of these overall was dubious, and they were very loose even when I attempted to glue them. In the end I just left them as you see above.

The whole kit took me about 4 hours, and here’s the finished model:

At first glance it looks great, and as I said with a bit of extra work it could have been near perfect. I think this is a kit that shouldn’t be rushed (which I did), and would look very nice if every part was assembled with great care. That said it’s almost too big: where would one display this?!

I found it fit very nicely – after some rigorous disassembly – in the recycling bin 🙂

Overall I’ll give this a thumbs up despite the epilogue above, since I think the design is fundamentally strong and because I have another by the same company that I have high hopes for…

  • Posted in Crafts
  • Robert

LEGO Rivendell

  • December 3, 2023

I bought this for my birthday earlier this year, and after many months of letting it age, it was time to build it:

This is Rivendell, the legendary elvish sanctuary in Lord Of The Rings and home of the powerful and ancient Elrond. Rivendell has always been depicted as a fantastic and beautiful place, and the LoTR films followed in the tradition:

When LEGO revealed this set I was simultaneously astonished and in love and appalled. The price was very high and it’s so big… but after several months of denying myself, I bought it 🙂

The box is gargantuan and heavy and there were fifty bags of pieces inside, as well as a sticker sheet (for the paintings, see below) and a hobbit-sized stack of instruction manuals:

The set is built in three large sections, and I did it in twelve sessions of about four bags apiece. It was a fascinating and fun build, and although I didn’t keep close track I would estimate it took me 25-30 hours in total. Some parts (the filigree and roof tiles) were a little frustrating, but it wasn’t exactly a difficult build. Here’s the finished set:

It’s so large photography was difficult! It’s about 80 cm wide, 35 cm deep and 50 cm tall. Here’s a view from the rear:

It can be separated into five different sections for ease-of-transport (and display). The first is the side of the main building, with Bilbo’s accommodations and the tower with statuary:

The middle section contains the elvish library, and the council platform where the Fellowship was first assembled. If you look close you’ll notice the small entry on the right side is at an unusual angle compared to the main building. This and several other slopes in the set were cleverly achieved using 3-4-5 Pythagorean triangles:

The last section contains the blacksmith, a waterfall and a removable pagoda. The instructions say the engineering of the base of the hexagonal pagoda was the most difficult part of designing the set. The small mushrooms you can see on this piece glow in the dark!

As you can probably see the detail is exquisite, with all sorts of furnishings and little touches that fans of the movie will spot. For instance the walls feature several cute ‘LEGO paintings’ such as this one depicting the forging of the rings:

And there’s also the shards of the legendary sword Narsil, no doubt waiting to be reforged at the smith:

The chairs on the platform are made from popsicle and frankfurter parts repurposed! Several of the mini figures have variant parts for sitting down:

Speaking of mini figures, the set has fifteen:

From the top, they are Bilbo, Frodo, Samwise, Pippin, Merry, Gloin, Boromir, Gimli, Aragorn, Gandalf, Arwen, Elrond, Legolas and a male and female elf. The set also includes many extra weapons, so even Arwen could wield a couple of axes were she so inclined!

The set has over 6000 pieces, but a few hundred of them are the roof tiles. These are applied to a single stud at a 45 degree angle, and getting them all aligned was not a trivial task! By far this was the longest and most tedious step, and I daresay I’ll shed a tear for this when/if I ever disassemble Rivendell.

Which brings me to the obvious question: Where the heck will I put this? It’s easily the biggest LEGO set I’ve ever built, and as far as I can tell fits on no surface in our house.

I think I’ll just leave it on the craft table in our library for now, and worry about that question when we return from our upcoming vacation!

  • Posted in Crafts
  • Robert

Fake Steak

  • November 18, 2023

We bought this at a Japanese shop in NYC when we were there back in October:

It’s a candy food kit that looks like a ‘hamburger steak’ (ie. hamburger patty) and egg lunch when made. We’ve made various candy food items in the past, but this one was so unusual we had to get it. It even includes green beans!

The instructions were daunting, since no English version exists. This was a job for the translator! Unlike similar kits they didn’t provide all the necessary equipment (such as measuring spoons) and I was very surprised to see preparation required milk and microwaving and even over an hour of waiting!

This first piece made was the egg, which is peach and orange flavoured. The yolk and white were made separately, and then the entire thing had to set in the fridge for an entire hour. I was only 75% sure I had followed the instructions correctly, so this was a long wait.

While the egg was setting I made the (melon flavoured) beans, which required a special mold. You can see here that the liquid appeared to spread between the molds to make a film, but when we removed them (much later) the beans separated immediately from the flash. They wiggled around like fishing lures, but on the plate (see below) looked just like actual beans.

The steak was the most in-depth portion, requiring milk and mixing and microwaving and a duration of resting before adding the liquid demi-glacé. Once completed it was astonishingly realistic, and looked much more like a meat patty than a chocolate cake.

It was time to assemble the entire dish:

Look at it! It’s amazing. Even in person it looked incredibly realistic, and not just a microwave chocolate cake with gummy egg and beans. Here’s a close up:

It was very sweet, but the cake was chewy and delicious and the fruit tastes were pleasant. Eating the egg was surreal because it looked so much like a real egg – and even felt like one when you cut it with a spoon – but just tasted of fruit jelly 🙂

This was an incredible kit. It worked perfectly and looked even better than we expected. It’s no wonder my reaction so closely mirrored the guy on the box: