Bricklinked UCS Millenium Falcon time-lapse build

[EdmanZA]

I recently completed my own journey of Bricklinking a UCS Millenium Falcon and while building, I set up a camera on a tripod to take a photo at the end of each step. Here is the result.

The Bricklinking process was pretty standard and I used most of the standard part substitutions. The whole thing kicked off when I came across an Ebay lot with a large number of parts, at a good price. From there I purchased a number of parts from Lego Bricks-n-Pieces and Pick-a-brick.

To simplify things, rather than looking for the absolute cheapest cost, I purchased any Bnp or PaB part that was cheaper, or within 20% or so of the average Bricklink price. I gathered the prices using BrickStock, Malou's Bricks & Pieces Helper website and a manual trawl through PaB. I then performed the comparison using Excel. I spread the purchases over a few months, spending around £50 at a time (the Lego free shipping limit). I ran out of cheap Lego parts around the same time as Bricklink's search functions were updated, so I finished off the part search using the new features, buying from UK and EU stores to save shipping.

A lot has been written by others on what parts can be substituted, so a won't go into detail on that. Rather I'll highlight a couple of my observations.

1.) If you're looking to buy the minifigures, it can be cheaper to get them parted out, rather than fully assembled. I saved around £20 this way.

2.) I choose to replace the 6x14 Dark red plate with a 2x6 and 6x12 dark red plate, rather than a 6x14 DBG.

3.) The Dark Bluish Gray Hinge Brick 1 x 2 Locking with 1 Finger Vertical End is quite rare and expensive. But, all 36 of them are used in combination a Light Bluish Greay Hinge Brick 1 x 2 Locking with 2 Fingers Vertical End. If you replace all 36 pairs with a 2 finger DBG, 1 finger LBG combo, you can save around £50. Most of the combos are hidden, but even where they're not, it's hard to see the difference.

4.) I replaced the 30516c02 LBG turntable with the current turntable and plates. The result saves £8 or so, has the same height and colour as the original and cannot really be seen on the finished model.

5.) Most people replace the printed radar dish with a plain one with a vinyl sticker. I instead used a waterslide transfer as this gave a much smoother final appearance.

Finally, a couple of pictures of the finished build.

[MaxTube55]

Wow that's a lot of pieces to order, I definitely could not see myself doing this anytime soon. Good job.

[kibosh]

I never get sick of these bricklinked beauties! Thanks for documenting the substitutions you made.

[Richpepperell]

I'm never ever going to manage this myself, but I love seeing other people's stories of how they tackle the task - it looks great!

[R0bcrt]

That is very cool, and I bet quite a bit of work in taking a picture after each step. I also like how you laid out your process in getting the bricks and how to find better deals!