Welcome back LEGO Fans! After a 6 month haitus, I'm back with my LEGO Star Destroyer Photo Blog. When last you read about my progress in October, I had completed the base frame, stand, and one quarter of the hull plating. Well, after months and months of delay I sat down again with all the bags of plastic pieces strewn about me and set to work. I only intended to get maybe the rest of the hull plating done and then save the rest for another weekend, but well... that didn't exactly work.

Day 4 - I Can't Feel My Legs!
May 6th, 2006

Start Time: 2:00pm EDT, Saturday May 6th
Finish Time: 2:40am EDT, Sunday May 7th

Like I said above, the goal was just to get the hull done, to get back into the routine of working on the set since I had neglected it for so very very long. So I spread the bags of legos around me, pulled out the instruction bible and set to work. The next hull section went together pretty quickly. The upper hull sheets were fairly different in construction so they took a little longer to put together and get in place.

Bottom Hull Complete
3/4 Hull Complete
Hull Complete!

One thing to remember is that the hull pieces attach via 3 hinges along the outside of the frame, and four magnets along the inner support strut. This makes the whole thing somewhat flexible (you can hinge the hull sections outward if you need to get to any of the parts inside), but also a bit fragile. I've had the bottom half of ship fall off, taking the magnets completely off the frame a few times now.

By the time the hull was put together, it was about 8:30pm. I looked at where I was, and at how many pieces were left to assemble and decided that it was now or never! If I kept at it, I could finish the set tonight! All I had to do was build the tower base, the bridge, and the little Tantive IV and I'd be done. So I set out to get some supplies and settled in for the final push. I pledged that I would not go to bed until the set was done!

At this point, photos became sporadic as I got increasingly groggy. By the end of it I didn't care about photos, I just wanted the damn thing done.

The supplies... Fried Rice, Red Bull and Extra Strength Tylenol.	The tower base component is highlighted on the picture above in red	What it looks like built and attached to the Star Destroyer frame.
Front and rear views of the bridge tower

So, the tower base, the bridge and the little bits had finally been assembled. The set was technically complete, all I had left to do was set the sections together, take some photos and be done with it. However, it was now 2:40am, and aside from my supply run and a 30 or so minute break chatting with Cari Elf on IRC, I had been working on the set for over 12 hours. And because I don't have a large table to work at, I had to build the whole thing on the floor of my office, so I spent 12hrs sitting cross-legged, bending over to reach pieces etc (See! There was a reason the Tylenol was in the picture above). So needless to say, my back and legs were killing me. It was late, I had spent 12hrs with my body all contorted, staring at little gray pieces of plastic with raised bumps. Since the set was technically complete, I declared victory and went to bed.

The next morning, I got up (slowly... back is very unhappy with me right now) and put the finishing touches on the whole thing. It was time to set the whole thing up and snap my final photographs.

One thing to keep in mind with this set is that not all the pieces actually snap together. Due to strange angles and weight issues, several of the sections merely "rest" on the one below it, so in these pictures some of the sections may look a bit tilted or off-center. That's just because I wasn't able to get them to stay in place long enough to take the pictures.

First Stage: Hull, Tower Base and Bridge Tower	Second Stage: Tower Base set in hull	Third Stage: Bridge Tower attached to Tower Base. WE HAVE A STAR DESTROYER!
Another view of the completed bridge tower	My, it sure is purdy....
The finished product! Complete with Tantive IV, and Datasheet!

Well, that's it for the set. In real-time, it took me about 21 total hours to complete. Pretty darn good for a LEGO set if you ask me Comes to an hourly value of roughly $14.30/hr. Kinda steep for most entertainment/hobbies, but damn do the results look good!

For those of you who want to get a better look at the set, I did a quick video with my digital camera. Just panned and zoomed a bit around the whole thing so you could see some of the smaller details better. It's a shakycam sort of video and the quality isn't the best, but it's something

Click HERE to see the video