A New Project: "Holy Sea Cow !!!"

My son-in-law is a card-carrying AFOL, just like myself.

A couple of weeks ago, he visited my home, carrying a couple of large trash bags containing nearly a ton of LEGO parts, each.

The bags contained two large sets from the first LEGO Movie:  Metalbeard's Sea Cow, and Benny's SPACESHIP!

During a recent move across the U.S.,  the previously-built models had been hastily dismantled and dumped into the bags.  The sets had been reduced to mostly single parts intermixed with a number of random built-up sub-assemblies.

After dumping the bag of parts for the Sea Cow on the work bench, the bigger built sections were placed in a box, while smaller sub-assemblies and piece parts were put into a couple of large compartmented trays which I had hanging around.

This was going to prove quite a challenge piecing this large model back together. Thankfully, he still had the instruction book to go along with the model.

We set to work.

The first parts to be reconstructed were the Metalbeard figure, the Double Decker Couch (this is the very one that graces the header of this blog), and the Micro-Managers included with the set.  All of the associated minifigs were also rounded up and reconstructed where necessary.

That first afternoon, the two of us made a little bit of progress on the ship itself, but it was very slow going.  Finding the necessary parts for each step of the build in that big unsorted mess is quite a daunting task.  Many of the needed parts have been found randomly stuck on the bottom sides of some of the sub-assemblies.

My son-in-law's work schedule prevents him from coming by very often, so I have been going solo on the build over the past couple of weeks.

Again pawing through the massive amount of parts has been the most time-consuming facet of this project.  On several occasions, I had to give up on finding that certain plate or SNOT brick to complete a build step, and ended up raiding my own parts stash to locate a substitute for the needed piece.  On several occasions, I've later found the original parts, usually stuck in an odd place on a sub-assembly.

Anyway, this is quite a fun project.  Progress is being made - slowly but surely.