Your thoughts on "cutting lego" ?

[Breakdown]

Oh, so that's what you wanted to do. The set you were talking about, 6394, is a completely different set than the one you were modifying. Personally, if it were me trying to add a stripe like that, I'd have used a sticker, but your modified pieces look right, like something Lego themselves would make, and function perfectly.

Nope, we're still talking 6394, at the moment, I don't have any of the modified bricks for that set, especially any of the rare yellow ones, so I just did a test fixture using 6386 wanted to see how these slide, etc. The final destination will still be 6394, four pieces will also create two garages' worth. Some parts in the mail for that right now.

[frogstudio]

I'm assuming that it would make the door too "stiff" to fluently open at all, but you might be able to join two 1 X 14 (or whatever the brick size is) upside down and right side up.

That's a good idea. Hadn't thought about it. Will give it a try!

[Breakdown]

That's a good idea. Hadn't thought about it. Will give it a try!

I have one "other idea" but it really depends on your look that you're trying to achieve, it's one of those I'll build it when I ever get around to it things.

If you're trying for a real industrial look, and I've seen this in person (cannot find a good pic on Google).

If your door is 15 bricks high. Use 24 modified bricks on each side. Have the edges of the the top 15 bricks extend well beyond the roof line of the building, you could use some slope pieces to both provide support against it, as well as improve appearance/add style, then from there utilize a string pulley system to open and close the doors.

Negatives: Would increase vertical footprint, could potentially negatively impact appearance.

Positives: Would allow the train shed to look significantly more "industrial", would allow a slider crane to properly operate inside without interference from above, it's a MOC so something extremely unique is extremely valuable in terms of design - right??

[Kodan Black]

Is the bloody looking bandage in the picture a joke or did you actually manage to injure yourself in this process?

[Faefrost]

Just to those who might be crazy enough to try this themselves, in order to avoid catastrophic injury, someone above mentioned Model Railroaders. A good source for infor. And what most will tell you is "you don't need power tools for everything". In this case a simple set of Jewelers Files (one of the most useful small tools to have in the house) will do the job quickly, precisely and with pretty much no risk of blood or mayhem.

http://www.micromark.com/12-piece-micro-size-file-set-with-handle,8382.html

It would take 2-3 minutes per piece to smoothly cut and shape that grove in ABS

[grum64]

Well done on keeping all your fingers. Thankfully there's no need to rename you KitKat

Edited February 26, 2015 by grum64

[vexorian]

Only if the brick was already damaged - So that in cutting and customizing the piece you are recycling it instead of filling the Ocean with a broken piece.

[Breakdown]

Is the bloody looking bandage in the picture a joke or did you actually manage to injure yourself in this process?

Ooops!!! Sorry about that . . . pretty gross I mean to crop that out. I've uploaded a second copy of the pic over the first one.

[Breakdown]

Rare yellow door modified pieces came in the mail today.

Finished product . . . . .for now believe me this is NOT the end destination for these parts, believe me . . . I will make this look good. But we're getting there, was too tempting to do this considering the fact that the top slides for the doors are already present in this set.

[Grosse Kind]

I've cut things in the past to achieve things that are now achievable with standard pieces that didn't exist at the time.

And, i stuck a sixteen tooth gear into a jig i fashioned that made a virtual lathe, and pared down its diameter. Still pretty pleased about that one.

[legoguy1984]

You did a good job on this, personally I would never cut, glue or modify my pieces unless I got/found it broken already.

[Wardancer]

Even for me, who has drilled into wolves and chopped bears' heads and limbs off in the process of customizing, sawing or cutting into a regular brick feels very strange, because they are not minifigs. But I guess it hurts only the first time.

[Trainmaster247]

I have seen Steetz by mega blocks sets have pieces with slots like what you want all you would have to do is stack them inmultiples hope this helps.

[Faefrost]

Even for me, who has drilled into wolves and chopped bears' heads and limbs off in the process of customizing, sawing or cutting into a regular brick feels very strange, because they are not minifigs. But I guess it hurts only the first time.

I agree. I have modified some Lego hinge bricks to use as smooth inexpensive hinges in non Lego modelling projects. It felt weird, dirty and evil. Like you were doing something you knew you should never even be doing.

[DrJB]

It is YOUR bricks, and you are free to do with them as you please. I always say:

Happy building, MOCing, LDDing, Cutting, or whatever it is you enjoy doing with YOUR bricks.

[paul_delahaye]

So how did you actually cut the notch? Did you file it in the end or Circular saw it?

I don't know I could bring myself to do this, but I can certainly see how well the outcome is, and it makes you wonder why LEGO don't make this plate modifier in this way.

[Boxerlego]

@Breakdown Awesome, That is a clean cut and looks very good but that is so dangerous to push a stack of 1x2 LEGO bricks across the circular saw blade. I know that to must have took several tries. I'm glad you wore safety glasses and work out the way you wanted.

@paul_delahaye He used the Circular saw. SUCCESS!!! says it all.

SUCCESS!!!

This isn't the final destination for these pieces, especially the rear two which are just propping up the rear end of the garage.

The garage door slides over these even smoother than the 90 turn from the top piece to the bottom pieces. I'm happy.

Aesthetically speaking I was pleasantly surprised it's not really overly noticable when the door is open.

Took about 8 pieces to get 4 good ones. 2 didn't cut at the right angle and several shot across the room at really high rates of speed, and I wasn't able to locate some of these, they may be under the chest freezer, I wore safety glasses because of this concern.

Close-up of my work.

[Breakdown]

I was just messin' around, I liked the file idea a lot. I made a stack, but not of the reds that I worked on. I made a stack of the white modified garage door pcs and did this one-by-one.

The gears in my brain started working a little when people suggested hobby files. Took me a while to find square ones, but anyhow . . .

I stacked the tile inbetween pairs of 2 X 1 modified bricks (they were effectively "ruined" by this proceedure, I displayed a good white one as an example, I didn't ruin the four white pieces, they were already horribly yellowed. You'll notice the spraying on the filing on the outer edges of the now off-white pieces. I used a very low-grit sand-paper to clean them up after the fact.

[Boxerlego]

Look at that, So you didn't use a circular saw after all and you used a hobby file instead. Smart! Do you know how to get that shiny look back on LEGO?

[zmasterbrick]

Hey, I'm all for modifying bricks. In this day and age if you can take it to the next level, do it.

[dr_spock]

A hobby table saw might be more suited for cutting small pieces than a full sized table saw.

[zmasterbrick]

That hobby table saw is awesome. Have you considered painting the brick after the cut. Tame ABS primer, then a matte color works well for a color change. It helps to prep the brick with a good wash before hand too.

[bonox]

even then, a zero clearance insert for a saw would be a very good idea.

If you don't know what that is or why it would be important, I suggest you stay away!

[flyboy01157]

NICE!

[talos]

I just cut some shorter rigid hose parts from a longer original piece. Saved having to buy more parts when I had what I needed already...