Living Digitally

My Office Gets Even Cooler with the Lego Imperial Shuttle 10212

I found the massive Lego Imperial Shuttle on sale several months ago, and finally had the time to put it together this afternoon. At 2,503 pieces, it's a sizable model with very good detail. It can be displayed in one of two ways: on its stand with its wings down, or on its landing gear with its wings folded up. In my opinion, it makes an excellent companion to the Death Star II and the Millennium Falcon.

Unlike the Millennium Falcon (which took the better part of two days to assemble -- a total of about 14 hours), my friends and I were able to build the Imperial Shuttle in only about four hours. The piece count is high, but nothing about the assembly is particularly challenging.

Below is a record of our progress throughout the afternoon.

The Lego Death Star II (10143)

The Death Star II (10143) is definitely one of my favorite Lego kits. My friend and I put this one together last weekend in about eight hours -- not bad considering how long we worked on the Millennium Falcon.

Here are the stats:

• Model #10143.
• Released in 2005 (currently discontinued).
• 3,449 pieces.
• 50cm wide and 65cm tall.
• Roughly 15 pounds.
• Eight hours of build time (two people).

Now here come the visuals:

The Ultimate Collector's Lego Millennium Falcon 10179

Over the 2010/2011 holiday break, I worked on a lot of Lego models. My kids got some great sets for Christmas, and I finally had time to work on some sets that I'd been accumulating. But the 10179 Millennium Falcon was by far the biggest project we took on.

At 5,195 pieces, this is one of the biggest sets Lego has ever made, and definitely the biggest I've ever worked on. It took myself and two friends (and my kids, intermittently) about 14 hours over two days which I consider to be very fast for something this massive.

If you ever take something like this on, here are two important tips to make the process more efficient:

1. Sort your pieces first. We spent about two hours sorting pieces into 12 different bins and about 12 Ziploc bags before we started building. Being able to find pieces quickly made a huge difference, and I'm sure cut our building time down dramatically.
2. Use multiple instruction booklets. One of us used the included instruction booklet while I used a PDF version on my iPad, and another friend used a PDF on a laptop. That allowed us to work on three different parts of the ship simultaneously, then bring them all together when they were ready. (Download the Millennium Flacon 10179 instruction book here.)

And here's how it turned out: