The last LEGO kit I built was the long ago released Millenium Falcon model 7190. I enjoy playing with LEGO but don’t have a lot of time, so it has to be a “special” model for me to find the time. Any Millenium Falcon model will fall into that category, so when my house-mate bought me model 7965 I was very happy. It was also interesting to see how LEGO has changed their model building process.
For a start, the process is divided into sections, with the pieces for each section being in an appropriately numbered set of bags. Believe it or not, this confused me a bit at first, because there was an un-numbered bag which contained bits for the fist few sections.
Still, once I worked that out, the process went reasonably smoothly. The main problem I found is that as the project got bigger, it was often harder to find where new smaller pieces went. They tell you which pieces you need, but only in certain cases point you to where it goes. This means poring over the diagram, and trying to compare it to the previous one in the hopes of discovering the location. I admit, I preferred the old method using ghosted parts with arrows showing where they bolted on.
Still, I managed to finish it with minimal swearing. Which is good, because it’s a really cool model, using a lot of tricks to get the shape right. For example each quarter wall of the saucer is three hinged sections. Each of those holds a section of the roof via another hinge, allowing you to open the top up and see inside.
I suppose sometime I’ll have to pull it apart sometime for storage, but I think I’ll have fun playing with it first!
