Big Sith

Continuing my Sith theme, last night's build was the UCS Darth Maul bust (10018).  This was a second hand purchase from Ebay but after looking for a while, I found someone who was selling what was clearly a rebuild but with all of the correct parts, including the very rare black quarter cylinders.  

In the end, what arrived came in a bin bag (!!! - though the most expensive parts had been separated into plastic bags) and was missing all of the 4x10 bricks.  The quality of the bricks was wildly varying - clearly this had been put together from mostly second-hand bricklink orders.  I ended up replacing some of the worst of the bricks from my spares and a couple of bricklink orders (I needed to buy the missing 4x10 bricks).  I may well start replacing some of the worst of the remaining ones over time but that will be a long-term project... along with replacing some of the yellowed parts on my second hand R2-D2.

So, after cleaning and sorting, the bricks filled three of my containers and I was thinking that this was going to be a big set... I hadn't realised, however, quite how big.  It's basically life-size and considerably bigger than the old Yoda which was what I had in my head.  

The build took me well over 4 hours and I had to risk the wrath of the wife to stay up and finish the last few layers.  

Given that this set is from 2001, it is quite impressive, all the more so because it is achieved from almost entirely bricks and plates.  Nowadays, you'd have an internal technic frame with panels of layered plates attached to each side (the approach pioneered with the Porg, as far as I am aware) but here it's just layer on layer of bricks or plates, using the top-down perspective instructions that were only used for this and Yoda, as far as I am aware.  It's not surprising that this method of instruction never took off: apart from the fact that it only works for layered models like this one, it's pretty hard to follow.  You have to pick all the parts for a page and then work through placing them all - no short cuts!

The end result, however, is quite awe-inspiring - a pretty much life-sized bust with a pretty grim visage. Not one for your bedroom...






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