Sloppiness When You Are Building

[legotrainfan]

I hope you're all happy with your Christmas presents and I hope you got plenty of Lego sets and bricks!

I've been building my Green Grocer that I bought for myself on Christmas. I didn't want to buy disappointed in case no one gives me Lego. My sorrows were in vain because I got the Family Home.

Anyway, the Green Grocer has reminded me how sloppy I can be when building. With the green grocer I forgot to build in the front door. I just realised this at the end of building the ground floor. I was suddenly surprised why such a piece like a door is left over. I checked the ground floor and I found out my mistake quickly. I also don't pay attention to the piece callouts as much as I should. I do look at them to find the necessary pieces, but I often forget to look for one or two elements or don't prepare the exact quantity of a brick. So my question is: how accurately do you work when it comes to building a Lego set?

[Eskallon]

Well yesterday I was building the Death Star 10188. I found I built rather well and I have not finished but If you take a break in between when you build Im sure you will find you make a lot less mistakes. The way however I can sometimes go wrong is where I put pieces in the wrong place.

[Rick]

I hope you're all happy with your Christmas presents and I hope you got plenty of Lego sets and bricks!

I've been building my Green Grocer that I bought for myself on Christmas. I didn't want to buy disappointed in case no one gives me Lego. My sorrows were in vain because I got the Family Home.

Anyway, the Green Grocer has reminded me how sloppy I can be when building. With the green grocer I forgot to build in the front door. I just realised this at the end of building the ground floor. I was suddenly surprised why such a piece like a door is left over. I checked the ground floor and I found out my mistake quickly. I also don't pay attention to the piece callouts as much as I should. I do look at them to find the necessary pieces, but I often forget to look for one or two elements or don't prepare the exact quantity of a brick. So my question is: how accurately do you work when it comes to building a Lego set?

With the Modular Buildings it sometimes happened that I forgot to add a piece here or there (but not a whole door ). I have a tendency to skip the piece list for every building step as well. With other models it doesn't happen that often.

[Jony Skywalker]

Well, I forgot to add a 1x6 brick at the Midi-Scale Falcon. But I wont add this piece, ´cause the falcon is robust and you can´t see, that the piece miss.

I think I have forget this, cause I didn´t turn the light on, only a little lamp is not so good.

[brickzone]

I've always been what I would consider a careful builder, but I'm amazed at the greater degree of attention to detail needed in building technic - I'm currently build my first proper set, and I've several times found myself about to put things on in the wrong place, orientation, order or I've almost missed a crucial step (e.g. finally connecting an axle rod that was added previously).

Green Grocer etc. also do require a bit more care than ordinary sets IMO.

[paul_delahaye]

I always seem to have a couple of big bricks left over when I build technic sets etc, had a couple left over with Market village the other week, I actually find it quite fun going back through the instructions trying to find what I missed,

Paul

[The Cobra]

Most of the times, I'm taking pictures of the set I'm building (because of my reviewing activity).

So: yes: I sometimes forget a piece here or there (and then I need to unbuild and re-take pics, or just hope no one finds out).

[David Thomsen]

My usual mistake is to confuse black with dark grey, or dark grey with light grey. Then much later in the building process I suddenly can't find the right piece in the colour I'm looking for. With Green Grocer that happened a couple of times, and I had to rip the whole thing off.

Often I don't get the right length for a place, so I'll have a 1x10 where I was supposed to have a 1x12. And then I can't figure out why nothing quite fits any more.

The first time I remember having a problem was with this set. There was an almost imperceptible part of the instructions of a small piece behind a large piece, and suddenly one of my pillars was too short. Mum fixed it for me, though.

[CP5670]

I've always been what I would consider a careful builder, but I'm amazed at the greater degree of attention to detail needed in building technic - I'm currently build my first proper set, and I've several times found myself about to put things on in the wrong place, orientation, order or I've almost missed a crucial step (e.g. finally connecting an axle rod that was added previously).

I find that the "baby" instructions we have these days in Technic, where only a few parts are used on each step, actually make it easier to mess up like this. If you're like me, the small steps make you want to do two or more of them simultaneously, but that also increases the tendency to make a mistake because you weren't examining the picture carefully for any one step.

My usual mistake is to confuse black with dark grey, or dark grey with light grey. Then much later in the building process I suddenly can't find the right piece in the colour I'm looking for.

This one is partly TLG's fault. It's well known that these colors can look very similar in some instruction manuals, especially if you are reading them in less than optimal lighting.

[Sandy]

My usual mistake is to confuse black with dark grey, or dark grey with light grey. Then much later in the building process I suddenly can't find the right piece in the colour I'm looking for. With Green Grocer that happened a couple of times, and I had to rip the whole thing off.

That has happened to me, too.

Once or twice I've accidentally skipped a page in the instructions, and suddenly found myself overwhelmed by the pieces to add. This is especially frustrating in the old sets that didn't have the list of pieces for each step, and often had many more pieces per step to add than nowadays.

But frankly put, these little slips is what makes building official sets fun and even a bit challenging. I'm always up for a bit of private giggles with my favorite hobby.

[Grrr]

I haven't missed out big pieces like doors, but do often find myself in trouble with large technic sets and modular buildings etc (the Eiffel Tower was a particular issue).

The main problems I have are with the greys, and the fact it's hard to distinguish the 'new' pieces in the picture from those that have been there for several steps.

The comment on 'baby' steps is completely on the mark, I find the lego steps to small and unsatisfying. What I generally do these days is gather the parts for the next 2 pages worth of steps, then build, and repeat. This reduces the tedium of finding pieces, and of building many similar parts for the model (left and right assemblies in particular I always do in one step).

My particular bugbear though is where you are adding a new piece in behind an existing part of the model. For example, step 31 of the truck in 6753, which I build last night. I put the red cylinder in the wrong place!

[TheBrickHitHouse]

Still haven't worked out where one dark grey 1x2 brick goes on my Death Star despite 4 read through's of the instructions and actually rebuilding the entire top half...

...and there's a 1x6 brick my sandcrawler is missing...

I'm very sloppy with building I fear

I know some guys race through building as if they are afriad the set will be taken from them, I'm usually doing multiple things while building - watching tv, talking etc - guess I should pay more attention...

[Grimmy]

I get the dark greys and black mixed up sometimes too. I wish they put a letter G or something under the part in the parts list box. Since I've come back to Lego I learned after building the Winter Toy Shop to make sure you follow the box parts list first so that you don't put the wrong part in. For days me and my niece weren't sure if we lost 4 green 2x4 plates or if they were missing. I went over the tree build a bunch of times then found out I put in those 2x4 plates instead of 2x3 plates. So from now on I never start building from the instructions on the page right away. I follow the instructions as they are and put together the parts list first.

[JCC1004]

I got at least 5 pieces wrong in my Sandcrawler and had to tear apart a wall section because it was wrong. I also has to tear apart the base of Tantive IV once.

[Captain Zuloo]

I don't usually suffer from lazy and sloppy building, I'm usually right on with the instructions. Having said that, there was a 4 x 12 plate in Cafe Corner that I had left over when I needed a 1 x 10. Still not sure what happened there.

[Tom Bricks]

I just built the fire brigade and ended up with a few more extra pieces than I should have, among them two white 2x8 plates. I guess I missed them but the model looks fine so I don't care much.

[Sergiu]

When I build a set I usually take all the parts from the part list on each step but sometimes I miss some and then I have to disassemble the model and then reassemble it because you can't really miss a part in Technic set.

[Rick]

I just built the fire brigade and ended up with a few more extra pieces than I should have, among them two white 2x8 plates. I guess I missed them but the model looks fine so I don't care much.

I believe I also had those left! However, I can't just let it rest, I just have to go through the instructions again.

[legotrainfan]

I know the problem of mixing up dark grey and black. With the Green Grocer I put two dark grey 1x1 plates under the little 1x3 arch forming the mousehole. Much later I realised that I couldn't find those two plates for another step, but I found two black plates of the same size instead. So I checked the instructions. When I found out what was wrong, I had to tear down half of the ground floor just to put in the plates with the right colour.

[Xenophilius Studz]

I've also had sloppy building. Most of the time I pay attention to the bricks that the step calls for, but sometimes I'll miss a a brick or plate. Luckily, I catch the mistake before I have to take apart have the model to fix it, usually. I also sometimes mistake the dark gray and black sometimes.

[Piranha]

Yes

Noobish Building move I thought but happened to me!

Most of the time I will forget to add pieces then a few pages later I wonder what happened.

I go back and see I missed a brick or two.

Now however I study each page carefully

[dr_spock]

I have problems with black and dark grey too. Once a while my reading glasses fail me and I miss adding a small part. I'm almost afraid to build my new 8258. I opened the box and found none of the bags are numbered.

[RileyC]

I dont seem to have a problem nowadays. I usually get all the pieces that says to have in the step before I actually build it.

[Milan]

I am really terrified when I am building a MOC and the realize that i missed not one part, but important section, crucial for MOCs integrity and strength. And it gets funny when it happens quite a few times.

For a normal set, I remember that I missed some pieces in big truck 8868, that cost me few hours (it was mu first big set)