Parts Stash: The Sorting It All Out

 As each batch of cleaned parts finishes drying, I load them back into a storage box and take them upstairs to begin the sorting process while watching a movie.

Actually, I have found sorting LEGO to be very relaxing and therapeutic!

The first phase is to just seperate everything by color.  Some plastic compartmented trays are helpful for this

When finished, I place those piles into large zip bags for future break-down by type and element.

It is at this point that I also seperate out all Technic elements and throw them in a seperate box regardless of color.

Another plastic bin is the repository for any 'not-LEGO' parts that I run across. It never fails that any pre-owned collection of parts that I have ever acquired contains a number of those undesirable knock-offs.

More to come....

Let The Cleaning Begin

 I am now well into getting a handle on the newly acquired LEGO parts hoard.

Just yesterday, I finished counting the parts.

Did I just say "counting the parts?!!"

Yep, I was curious as to how many pieces were in this lot, so I took a rough count.

This was done by quickly moving ten elements at a time from one plastic box to another and making a checkmark on a piece of paper for each 10 pieces moved. 

This goes faster than one would think, and I was able to whip through 1000 parts in a little around an hour's time.

The grand total:  roughly 15,000...

That's a lot of LEGO!

Now I am in the process of cleaning all of it, a ritual I use whenever I acquire previously owned LEGO from yard sales and such.

The first step is to load a large plastic kitchen sieve full of parts.

This is placed in a larger mixing tub filled with water, a little dish soap, and a cup of vinegar.

The batch is taken out to the garden hose in the back yard. They are soaked and swished around in the cleaning solution for several minutes.

To remove any caked-on dust or other substances, a tooth brush is kept at the ready. 

After the cleaning, the garden hose is used to thoroughly rinse all of the parts.

Finally, the batch of parts is taken to the basement and spread out on a beach towel to dry.

I try to seperate the parts as much as possible to allow water on all surfaces to evaporate.

I have found that 2xN bricks and slopes tend to retain water inside the recessed circular holes inside the bottoms , so I end up shaking that out right away.  It typically takes a day or two to allow the batch to completely dry, with the help of periodically re-arranging them on the towel if any are still sticking together from water capillary action.

After that, the clean and dry parts are ready to gather up, sort, and integrate into the collection!

To date, I am on the 5th batch of the cleaning phase from the newly acquired stash.

 Approximately eight to ten more to go.

Then, the sorting begins....

Cheers!

A New Parts Stash To Process

 Jeez, It's been a long time since I've posted here on the Double Decker Couch.

That's largely because I've been extraordinarily busy with many other things aside from LEGO building

That all changed last week, however, when I got a visit from some neighbors across the street. Their college age son, who is an avid builder of LEGO Star Wars and Technic sports/race cars decided he no longer wanted to keep a store of parts belonging to other dismantled sets.

So they asked if I would like to have them.

Of course, I said "Sure!"

After all, I can always use a few more additions for the ol' parts stash...

What I brought home was far more than a 'few additions'!!

This lot consists of seven 3x14x14 plastic boxes, and four larger plastic storage bins, all loaded to the gills with LEGO parts!

Holey Moley!  

If I were to guess, there are well over 10,000 parts in these boxes, ranging from 1x1 round tiles all the way up to large base plates, and everything in between.

A random paw-through of the boxes revealed not only standard classic elements, but a good number of more unusual parts, an abundance of minifigs, and a respectable showing of Technic pieces.

So, I suspect a goodly amount of time will be spent over the next few weeks in cleaning, counting, sorting, and re-doing my parts storage system to accommodate this massive collection.

Cheers!

Time For A MOC-Fest !

This past week, the Missus and I took a trip to visit out-of-state family. 

Our five year old grandkiddo is just getting started in the world of LEGO building.  He has this small Classic building set as well as a rather large pile of LEGO Dots.

One of the afternoons during our stay, I had some idle time, so I commandeered the set and began building random MOCs out of the very limited selection of elements. 

This is actually a great exercise for any LEGO builder, as it takes a bit more creativity to render models utilizing a very sparse set of available parts and colors.

I managed to knock out nine different MOCs... building them....photographing them...and dismantling them to start immediately on the next one.

Here goes....

Grampa / Grandson Project

 A couple of weeks ago, one of my grandsons visited the TFTDDC home. As usual, when asked what he wanted to do, the answer was, "Go to the basement"!

On this venture into the sub-terrainian vault, I broke out every box of red LEGO I owned.

The mission: build the coolest red tower ever with as many of the parts as possible!

Here are the results...

I made sure to include plenty of ledges and platforms on which to place a number of minifigs.

A great way to spend an afternoon with a grand-kiddo.

Final note:  It took nearly as long to break this model down and re-sort the pieces as it did to build it!

Cheers....

An Estate Sale LEGO Score

 Last weekend, a family in my neighborhood conducted an estate sale at their home.

Perusing through a table full of kids' toys I was delighted to run across two gallon-sized zip-lock bags full of LEGO pieces.

$8 per bag was a huge steal, as I estimated there were well over a thousand parts in the lot!

When I got the bags home and perused through them, I did find a fair amount of 'not-LEGO' pieces in the mix, but there was still a ton of the real stuff.

Lots of standard bricks and plates, plus a lot of random different parts that I don't have in my massive inventory.

I even found enough minifig sections to piece together six new mini-dudes!  There was also a Star Wars BB8 minifig in the mix.

Here are some pics of the overall stash after disassembling many random built-up sections.  I've sorted out all of the dark gray elements at this point.  

A lot more to go....

Cheers!

Jedi Training - Lighting Things UP !

 This is the final post covering the Degobah diorama.  This one concerns the addition of a touch of LED lighting to Yoda's hut.

The lighting device of choice comes from one of those flicker votive candles.

The LED used for this item has built in circuitry to produce the flicker effect, making it the perfect choice to simulate a fireplace flame in a LEGO set.

After carefully extracting the LED from the candle base, it was only a matter of wiring it up along with a limiting resistor, a battery, and a small two-position switch. 

A 270 ohm resistor was perfect for achieving the right brightness for the LED, and the whole thing is powered by a 3 volt lithium battery.

The LED assembly was hot melt glued to a black 2x2 plate to facilitate its mounting inside the structure.

I had to disassemble a substantial portion of the model to reach the area where the LED would go.

The unit was originally installed in the section where the original trans red and orange tile 'fireplace' resided.  This detail was buried way off to the left side of the hut and was not even visible from any angle from the outside.

Once I had the entire set re-assembled, I switched on the lighting feature and saw...nothing!

The LED was too far buried behind other interior elements to shed any light at all.

So, the model came apart a second time....

On this round, the LED was moved to the very center of the hut, out in the open.  I also sealed the large opening at the back of the diorama with white bricks that would reflect more of the light forward.  

Of course, this now prevents the interior details of the hut from being visible, but I am willing to sacrifice that in order to have the lighting effect, instead.

Engineering always involves some degree of give-and-take. 

Once the model was re-assembled and switched on, the results were very satisfactory. The lighting effect has a nice orange glow that flickers as if there's a real fire burning inside.

The Degobah Jedi Training diorama is now completed!

Thanks for looking.