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Post by Jean B. on May 5, 2023 10:50:01 GMT -5
Hello folks, my name is Jean, I'm fortysomething, and I have to admit: I've become an addict. It all started around 18 months ago, when I was home alone and slightly bored. I went to the attic, found the old Lego bricks of my childhood, and began to play with. Meanwhile I had to increase the dose and have to order new stuff twice a week. I've neglected other things in my life, like model-building, and most of my income is spent for new stuff. I guess soon the bank will collect the house, but I hope that I'll have enough Lego bricks by then to build a new one. Of course I've talked to experts what to do, and they say that it may be dangerous to end consuming from one day to another, and that it may be better to keep the high dose for a while and then reduce it slowly. So I've stopped all other things for a couple of weeks for just concentrating on plastic bricks, and I really hope that you wouldn't despise me for what I'm doing (or not), but believe me: I'm weak and I really do everything to come over this. ***SNIFFF***
For those of you who are not afraid to see what such an addiction is resulting in, here are some shocking pictures:
I've already presented my Lego colour snippet box, and I was unsatisfied with the large red tiles on the lid. They show an ugly spot right in the center where the liquid plastic gets into the mould. BlueBrixx offers the same 6x6 tiles without this spot (in front), and so...
...I had to change this detail. The colour is very slightly different, but for me it's o.k.
The life of an addict can be ugly, as shown here. A large base plate was cut with a carpet knife into smaller pieces, just the exact size for two technical support stations I need for model-building (I still dream of a return to the healthy life of a model-builder, really!). Those pieces were glued with strong "liquid plastic" onto heavy multiplex boards, which I had cut to the required measurement in my tool & garden market.
Plain, solid, heavy - I guess these pieces will have a longer life than I'll have...
Made for eternity!
And what the hell is that?
You know, for my dioramas I like to add small figurines with fashions of the 1930s, and this device helps making them. The figurine is placed onto the bottom, reverse side up, and the stand (cut before) is held by the bricks, so that I can easily glue everything together, and everything will be exactly plain and straight.
I hope you can see what I mean...
That's the result.
And this is the (almost) final version of the thing I've already shown in my current Horch-thread as a test version. Eventually it'll be in use for another model car whether I should get cured and can return to my model-building workbench.
And now for something completely different:
For another project I need transparent plates, which are not available at Lego's. So I had to buy some from BlueBrixx, but unfortunately those 32x32 plates are slightly curved:
Boil some water in the kettle,...
...pour it into the sink and dunk the plate into it for FIVE seconds (not longer, please!),...
...press the plate immediately between two absolutely plain and heavy boards until it's cooled down...
... and you have a nicely even large plate!
Perfect!
I don't need the full size, but smaller pieces, and so I mark the required area and cut it down with a fine saw.
If you place the cuts absolutely exact you indeed get a closed outline, even at the cut edges! Those can then be polished with a lady's nail polishing file with the effect that you hardly can tell the original edges from the newly cut ones!
But what's all this good for? There's a website, I guess it's indicated or at least it should be, called "Bricklink Studio" where you can make 3D-sketches for Lego designs. I've tried but I learned that I'm already too old to get used to new programmes, so I simply took my familiar "InkScape" and made 1:1 templates for Lego bricks in all sizes. These templates can be easily combined to get a proper impression of what you're planning. It also makes it easier to count all the pieces for contacting your dealer.
In Berlin drugs are now legalized, and so I could order my stuff online and got it delivered by postal service. Around the half of the quantity was consumed immediately, the rest brick by brick. It was a shocking experience, but I felt like in heaven!
With every brick you're placing, shapes and colours seem to explode right in front of your eyes, it's dangerous, it hurts, it can ruin your life, but there's no alternative, believe me!
Having the screen on 1:1, you can easily identify the correct size of any brick.
As soon as you've reached the maximum dose, you're sliding into the so-called "flow", everything seems to get light & easy, there's no time and space anymore, simply a never-ending "yeeeaaahhh"...!
But this experience won't last long: Right when you're feeling like flying, the effect wears off and you hit your rock bottom when you realize that your dealer shortened the dose and you don't know how to get ahead!
I was lucky and found some old remainings of the stuff on the attic, slightly worn, but to get over the weekend an alcoholic would drink Eau de Cologne. You see, it's not easy to do a withdrawal, they always now how to force you to place another order, and of course I'm going to do so! However, believe me, please, it will be the last time and then I'm returning to my Horch project, promised!
And then, later, when I'll be cured, I'm going to place my Horch's herein, giving them an adequate home.
Hope they'll like it.
And please do not despise me, but believe me, anyone can be a Lego victim, anytime  |
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Post by oldirish33 on May 5, 2023 11:22:31 GMT -5
I am sorry my friend, but no 12 step programs have yet been developed for your particular addiction. The positive side, is that some absolutely incredible things come from your addiction. Stay strong!  |
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Post by Tom on May 5, 2023 12:32:05 GMT -5
As usual, very clever ideas and execution!
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Post by reeft1 on May 5, 2023 12:51:09 GMT -5
There are worse addictions to have….
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Post by DeadCanDanceR on May 5, 2023 13:14:05 GMT -5
There are worse addictions to have…. Agreed completely!  |
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Post by Jean B. on May 7, 2023 11:33:17 GMT -5
I am sorry my friend, but no 12 step programs have yet been developed for your particular addiction. The positive side, is that some absolutely incredible things come from your addiction. Stay strong! Well, I guess in my case "12 steps" would evoke building a 12-storeys-high diorama, anyway...
As usual, very clever ideas and execution! ...thanks to Mr Lego, who assumably had one of the biggest and most dangerous ideas of the 20th century!
There are worse addictions to have…. Agreed completely! Couldn't tell what, but thanks for your solace
Have you ever...
...seen this Lego kit before! When searching for some poor Lego fellows in the www, I found pictures of this vintage Lego kit, made from 1957 to 1959. This was long before "my" time, but I found this sooo terribly cute, that I immediately went up to the attic and...
...indeed found this original printed Lego sign! This proves in my opinion, that my older brother must had got this kit. My brother was the first child after war in my family, and so that's the only possibility that this sign - and all other parts of this kit! - are in our family's Lego collection.
The dust of 65 years! I of course wanted to clean this sign, and made a quite terrible experience: The imprint on these old bricks are obviously made with a sort of ink (!) which is resistant against mineral spirit, but not against warm water with some soap! The blue paint gets liquid (!) and washes off, so be careful if you should like to rinse your own old printed bricks!
However, I immediately tried to restore the brick with a thin brush and matte blue enamel paint.
I'm absolutely sure that in my childhood I had several pairs of those "wing plates", but when I got all the Lego stuff back from my nephew, who was the latest one in our family to play with the bricks, only one single plate was left  . For re-making the kit, I need two of them, and so I simply tried to "fake" a normal rectangle plate by filling the reverse side with white-dyed resin.
With low rpm to be grinded off...
...this seems to be a proper method for making new old parts!
The waffled reverse side proves that this is one of the oldest Lego parts ever. Of course you can buy original parts for some cents at "BrickOwl", but most of the vendors require a minimum order value of € 10 plus 5 or 7 Euros shipping costs, which I wanted to avoid.
The next problem is the magnificent glass shop window of the kit. I have a schemed memory that this part was existent in my early childhood, but already back then was torn in any direction and not to use anymore, so I guess it was thrown away. This part seems to be impossible to get anywhere, and the complete kit is offered on epay for decent € 250 up to € 1000 (!!!), so I decided to make a new (and better) glass box by myself from printer foil.
For building this kit I chose original vintage Lego bricks which I had cleaned and slightly polished.
This is a picture of the original kit as sold in 1957. Imagine: those few and small bricks were sold in a box like precious jewelry! I guess in 1957 this really was something luxurious, at least in Germany!
To create the glass box was easy as I've used my self-made design system for Lego bricks!
For a complicated kit like this it's recommendable to follow the instruction step by step, meticulously !
I make one addition in form of the grey floor tiles. They are also original parts and were indeed available in the late 50s/early 60s, and they stabilize the whole kit as they are joining the splitted base plates. And furthermore the showroom looks a little more elegant, don't you think?
Many hours later the kit is ready!
Throughout the 1960s Lego offered own plastic model cars in a scale of around 1:78. I remember these, we had a few and they were quite important as Matchbox cars with 1:64 were too big, and Wiking cars with 1:87 were rather small. Those Lego cars were made in Germany, therefore there were mostly German brands. Unfortunately none of those old cars survived in my family, as my brother began collecting Wiking cars soon. You can get Lego cars at ebay, but I found two VW's in my own collection, and I think they're doing fine for the moment!
The small windows seem to be a quite rare Lego part at all!
The rounded corner is - together with the glass box - a real highlight of this kit!
I was lucky and found some of those old street lights, too, these parts had no knobs and could only be placed together with the other bricks.
I couldn't resist making a ground design imitating the front picture of the vintage box! Imagine we had an idea of doing such back then...!
I simply must had built this tiny kit, for several reasons: I love this magnificent adaptation of streamlined 1950s architecture with the glass box, pushed out of the building and the rounded corner on the reverse side together with the "kidney shaped" roof (the complete design era is called "kidney table" in Germany, as coffee tables in that shape were the demonstration of "modern life" in the 1950s!). And furthermore, not far away from where I live, there is a real vintage showroom of Volkswagen, built in that style:
I was happy to find at least these two old pictures of this beauty!
This pavillon still exists, and until around 2010 it was indeed still a VW showroom! - patronated by Eduard Winter, who was for decades the local hero of Volkswagen in Berlin (and former dealer for Opel before WWII ). Today a cafe is located in this glass pavillon,...
...but imagine how this must have looked back in 1958, when there Beetles and Karmann-Ghias and a Porsche 356 were presented on the natural travertine floor tiles, and ladies with petticoats and handbag, gentlemen with slim suits and ties gathered around the curved shop windows... *SIGH*
My personal connection - of course - is my occupation with Bugatti, twenty years ago, with which I automatically was part of the Volkswagen family. Meanwhile Bugatti was transferred to Porsche, and Porsche gave it away to any south-eastern European e-company for eventual developing of new cars - we will see... For all these reasons I simply MUST had this kit built, creating a childhood I've never had, but believe me: It's sheer FUN, FUN, FUN Thanks for following!
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Post by Tom on May 7, 2023 13:59:14 GMT -5
LOVE that dealership! Very creative of you to remake parts and a fantastic result! My nephews used to have some Lego cars when I was a kid, I loved playing with them. One was a Volkswagen and one a tanker truck, perhaps an Opel Blitz.
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Post by oldirish33 on May 7, 2023 18:08:16 GMT -5
I don't think I have seen Lego that vintage, very interesting. I wasn't really familiar with Lego until my son was young in the early 1990's. Your recreation/ restoration work is excellent! The pictures of the old VW dealership reminded me of this building where I used to live, which housed a Chevrolet dealership. The building still exists and is owned by a university, but has been modified for office/class room space.   |
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Post by DeadCanDanceR on May 7, 2023 19:25:58 GMT -5
Great and very interesting thread, as usual! Jean. So you're "fortysomething" years old? I would have sweared you were much older!  |
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Post by GBOAC002 on May 8, 2023 10:53:14 GMT -5
Fascinating construction. Interesting that you worked for Bugatti in the early VW ownership days. I recall seeing the early Veyron concept and pre production cars at the various European motor shows. Veyron became a feature of UK car scene from 2006. When did you leave?
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Post by gauchoman on May 8, 2023 12:11:24 GMT -5
Hi, Sorry I am late to your post! I understand you, I had a similar block system named " Rasti" and I made my own toys from 5 to 15 years old. My concerning were the trucks, planes and cars, in scales from 1/43 to 1/100, so very soon I was creating my own pieces. However, I quit at 15 years old because my brother was to inherit the toy, and because the plastic of the pieces were getting old. For me, it was a good change, because I started investigating other systems of construction, specially for cars: carton, aluminum and wood. I love your work, and your designing new parts. Good luck, we expect to see more constructions from your side! Gaucho Man |
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Post by jager on May 9, 2023 8:16:59 GMT -5
Wonderful memories Jean. In the late 1960's when I was around 4 or 5 years old, the company my father worked for imported a piece of machinery from Denmark. They also sent out an engineer from Demark to help my father install it, and one of the things he bought with him was this Lego truck.  For anyone else that wants to visit their childhood Lego, there is this database that shows what sets were released year by year: brickset.com/sets/year-1968/page-1 |
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Post by Jean B. on May 18, 2023 12:17:10 GMT -5
LOVE that dealership! Very creative of you to remake parts and a fantastic result! My nephews used to have some Lego cars when I was a kid, I loved playing with them. One was a Volkswagen and one a tanker truck, perhaps an Opel Blitz. Thanks! It was such a pleasure to do all this! I browsed some fan-sites where all old Lego kits are listed, with photos, and it's crazy: I forgot so many kits and special parts, but when I saw the pictures, I immediately was deeply back into the subject and saw myself building all those little kits back then. My family had not much money, and so I got mostly the tiny kits with a few bricks from my great-grandmother or my grandparents when they visited us. I hardly can imagine that there is anyone born after war without having memories of a "Lego childhood"
I don't think I have seen Lego that vintage, very interesting. I wasn't really familiar with Lego until my son was young in the early 1990's. Your recreation/ restoration work is excellent! The pictures of the old VW dealership reminded me of this building where I used to live, which housed a Chevrolet dealership. The building still exists and is owned by a university, but has been modified for office/class room space. Great architecture of that time! In Berlin we have the "Congress Hall", a gift from the Americans in the late 1950s:
In the 1980s the "hat brim" of the building collapsed and claimed two lives. The building was reconstructed, although in a less elegant version and nowadays serves as a "House of the Cultures of the World".
Great and very interesting thread, as usual! Jean. So you're "fortysomething" years old? I would have sweared you were much older! Well, model-building makes you aging much faster than any other hobbies, perhaps that's the reason
Fascinating construction. Interesting that you worked for Bugatti in the early VW ownership days. I recall seeing the early Veyron concept and pre production cars at the various European motor shows. Veyron became a feature of UK car scene from 2006. When did you leave? I remember I left Bugatti around 2007/8, after the "hot phase" of the market launching was over. Bugatti back then had big difficulties to sell the car. While 300 Ferrari F40 were sold in 20 minutes, the 300 Veyron needed five years and lots of "special versions" until they finally got it. And then it took further years to produce and deliver the cars. When there was no further possibility to work for Bugatti from Berlin, I was offered a job in Molsheim, in the Chateau St. Jean, but with "French conditions" instead of "VW Wolfsburg" conditions, and that was not that attractive at that time. So I spent another couple of years for Volkswagen, but then decided to do something completely different, but that's another story...
Hi, Sorry I am late to your post! I understand you, I had a similar block system named " Rasti" and I made my own toys from 5 to 15 years old. My concerning were the trucks, planes and cars, in scales from 1/43 to 1/100, so very soon I was creating my own pieces. However, I quit at 15 years old because my brother was to inherit the toy, and because the plastic of the pieces were getting old. For me, it was a good change, because I started investigating other systems of construction, specially for cars: carton, aluminum and wood. I love your work, and your designing new parts. Good luck, we expect to see more constructions from your side! Gaucho Man Thanks for your story! I've never heard about "Rasti", but of course checked the matter online! Do you had this in South America? Because Lego had a patent for several decads, prohibiting any copies of their system in Europe and I guess also in North America. Meanwhile anyone can produce bricks with this system, but I've made the experience that those alternatives are a good extension, but no replacement for Lego. In Germany (and I guess elswhere) there was a system called "Fischer Technik" also very popular, but that was "technical" and not "beautiful", if you know what I mean...
Wonderful memories Jean. In the late 1960's when I was around 4 or 5 years old, the company my father worked for imported a piece of machinery from Denmark. They also sent out an engineer from Demark to help my father install it, and one of the things he bought with him was this Lego truck. For anyone else that wants to visit their childhood Lego, there is this database that shows what sets were released year by year: Great, thank you! As I still have all the printed bricks with "Garage", "Post", "Hotel" and so on, I can conclude which kits my older brother must have had. Still great stuff, imagine to have such an idea!
I've pimped my tiny VW diorama still a little bit with two new Wiking cars and...
]  ...the last three remaining trees that I've found on the attic!
Now I'm as close to the box's picture as possible!
The complete kit is already stored carefully, as I have no space for showing it  , but I'm happy to have done this! And I'm fond that I've slowly passed the climax of my Lego addiction. There are some things I've built resp. improved, and I'm going to show all this in the next time. All this was necessary to get the pressure out of the kettle, as we say in Germany, and so I'm going to return to my workbench and continue building my Horch's. See you |
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Post by Tom on May 18, 2023 14:30:32 GMT -5
Brilliant!
I guess I was lucky, I had lots of Lego as a kid. My parents approved of Lego as a way to learn construction and 3D thinking and to stimulate your creativity. I guess my playing with Lego enabled me to design furniture easily, because it taught me to think about structural rigidity and practical solutions. I had some Fischer Technik too, it helped me get into technology but I preferred Lego. My niece still has my old Lego from the '60s and '70s.
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Post by alex on May 18, 2023 17:26:48 GMT -5
In my completely unprofessional opinion; Jean, you are beyond help. I say this not to be judgmental. I say this because I too am beyond help. When it comes to addictions (little cars; vintage stereo equipment; watches...you name it) I've probably got it. It will surely be the death of us. But what a great way to go!
Have fun and do the stuff that makes you smile. When something goes awry while I'm "working" on a project, be it a model car or the restoration of an old amplifier, I curse and complain, but deep down I'm glad that the project will be a bit more challenging than I had anticipated. It's the journey that we're addicted to.
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. For re-making the kit, I need two of them, and so I simply tried to "fake" a normal rectangle plate by filling the reverse side with white-dyed resin. 
, but I'm happy to have done this! And I'm fond that I've slowly passed the climax of my Lego addiction. There are some things I've built resp. improved, and I'm going to show all this in the next time. All this was necessary to get the pressure out of the kettle, as we say in Germany, and so I'm going to return to my workbench and continue building my Horch's. See you 