About Benjamin Stenlund

Benjamin started building he was three, when his father gave him a small Futuron set (6810), and has not stopped since then. Castle and space are nearest and dearest to his heart, but other themes occasionally get built, too; there are quite a few super heroes and Star Wars sets in his collection, at least. He builds as Henjin_Quilones on Flickr, and under the same name is the leader of one of the guilds on Eurobrick's Guilds of Historica role building game. When he is not building, he is busy being a stay-at-home dad to three kids and trophy househusband to one wife.

Posts by Benjamin Stenlund

Swoosh swiftly across the stars

Every year in November, talented builders turn out spaceships with a very particular style as a friendly themed challenge. Unlike SHIPtember, when the goal is to build a huge spaceship, Novvember is all about the Vic Viper, a style of racing spaceship made popular in several video games. Tino Poutiainen brings a lovely addition to the fleet of Vipers with this clean and elegant model. It is microscale, with some Apollo astronauts at the helm, which is surprising but cool, and I can count all of four visible studs on the whole darn thing. That’s impressive given the angles involved. And the color blocking is perfect. The black stand gives it a display presence that sets it apart from the pack, too.

Looking at the ship, there are two pieces that jump out to me right away. The first is the old Blacktron II jet pack, one of my favorite childhood accessories, tucked seamlessly between the cockpit and the tail. The second is the cockpit itself, a Ninjago spinner dome; that’s a part that I’ve always wanted to use but have yet to find a good way to integrate it. The rest is just so smooth and refined that nothing leaps out. It makes me wonder how it all holds together, which is a great puzzle to have when looking at a build. Novvember might be come and gone, but we can still enjoy spaceships.

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Slower than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive

I was recently at the Caterpillar Visitors Center in Peoria, looking at the big construction vehicles made for shaping the Earth in a profound way, from the gigantic mining dump trucks to the tiny little excavators. Somewhere in between are the bulldozers, offered in nearly a dozen sizes. The biggest Caterpillar, the D11, is one huge rig, but shockingly it isn’t the biggest dozer around. That title belongs to the Komatsu D575A-3 Super Dozer, weighing in at 336,400 pounds and measuring 38+ feet long, 24+ feet wide at the blade, and 16 feet high. While Beat Felber‘s LEGO model is not quite so large, it is not small, either. The builder has a whole series of 1:28.5 scale machines, from dump trucks to mining shovels, and the Super Dozer is a super addition to the lineup. The little kid inside of me is drooling all over the keyboard as I look at this beast, because this is the bulldozer every kid imagines driving as a construction worker.

Click to see more, including a video of the dozer at work

Take a glance at the fancy ant

Around my house, especially in the summertime, killing ants becomes a hobby. There are lots of different sizes and colors coming in and trying to eat the piles of food that my kids drop on the floor during meals — big, small, red, brown, and black. But I smush them all. R 194 appears to have a different view on ants, one that is decidedly more pleasant and whimsical. Instead of a voracious intruder, we get a curious explorer, lighting up its way with a lantern, ready to dig with a shovel and pick, and investigating with the magnifying glass. The mandibles look spot on with the tooth elements, and the antennae are perfect made with paint rollers. The shaping on the head and the articulation of the joints looks great, and I love the delightful yellow boots on the hindmost feet. But I still don’t like ants in my house.

Gringotts just got hit by a reducio spell

Building in microscale requires a special skill set. One must have an eye for simplification of textures along with a firm grasp of the essentials of whatever it is. Eli Willsea has that skill, as this tiny (yet still large) rendition of Gringotts bank from Harry Potter demonstrates. I am guessing it comes from the first film, as there is a recognizable Hagrid down in the vaults, alongside what I suppose to be Harry and a goblin. Everything one would need for Gringotts is there, from the columns to the large dome, along with the crazy tracks for the carts in the depths beneath. My one complaint is that the columns on the front-corner facade are too straight, lacking the signature tilts seen in the films.

The rock pillars beneath the street are impressive, built in sideways rings and then threaded onto Technic axles, allowing them to spin around into different configurations. This is great, because it means that you can build the same shape a bunch of times and have it look different depending on how it is angled. The cars down on the tracks are delightfully simple, consisting of droid arms and round 1×1 tiles with bar and pin holders. The cart up on the street above-ground is also inspired, making brilliant use of wands on sprue to give delicate texture to the rails. It’s also being pulled by something skeletal (a thestral, perhaps?). This was originally built for our own Harry Potter Microscale Magic competition, but Eli failed to complete the photography in time. While that is too bad, it is certainly better late than never!

What comes of building your house on sand

LEGO geometry typically involves lots of right angles. There’s really only so much you can do with a product that is based on a brick. However, that squareness need not be pejorative and can serve instead as an inspiration to mess with expectations. That is what this temple by Jaap Bijl does. While the building itself is based on the good old ninety degree paradigm, it is set crooked to skew the perception of the creation. Is it being swallowed by sand? Probably. This is likely the perfect example of what happens to a building built on sand, rather than solid rock. Foundations matter, people!

The build uses surprisingly little studs-on-top construction, as the steps are built sideways, most of the facade consists of tiles, and the beautiful blue stripe is being all kinds of SNOTty (or Studs-Not-On-Top-y). Then there is the dome on top, which is also studs-every-which-way. My favorite bit, though, is probably the texture of the tan area between the sections of dark tan and blue stripes, as well as above the doorway; the jumper plates and regular plates make for a very cool look, just like uneven weathered brick. The decay of the structure is lovely, even if the golden-weapon-equipped men guarding it are not.

Guns? Check. Rotors? Check. All systems go!

Sometimes the inspiration for a LEGO build comes from the builder’s head, or from some media franchise, or from some particular piece that suggests a creation just by its shape. Sometimes it is all of those, as this build by Andreas Lenander demonstrates. The build was begun by thinking about the rim from the Harley Davidson Fat Boy, which led to thinking about the airships from Avatar, which led to a very cool, very capable-looking heavy gunship. A couple of these bad boys cresting the ridge, launching missiles from the under-wing batteries, spraying lead from the nose mounted gatling gun, would be sure to send the enemy running in fright. It is like a combination of the A-10 Warthog and the AH-64 Apache, and I love it.

Besides the rims, the build uses some of the grenade tips that I associate with newer Batman sets as its missiles, stuck into Technic pins and then stuck into the underside of bricks. It is a simple connection, though slightly “illegal“, but it is a great one to remember when trying to reverse stud direction. The Technic axle connector on the nose looks great, too, with the four notches giving the impression of multiple barrels on the machine gun. It is a bit light on greebling, despite what one might expect from a sci-fi build, but I think it is more appropriate to make it look smooth and professionally engineered, rather than cobbled together. After all, if you want to take down some Na’vi with your military-industrial complex, you have to look sharp and pack a big punch.

Three wheels are better than two

For most of us, tricycles were what we rode as kids, before we graduated to big-kid bicycles. Two wheels were cooler, faster, and just all-around better than three. And we all know how awkward it is to be the third wheel on a date; two wheels are always preferable in relationships and transportation (four wheels are fine, too; both double dates and cars can be lots of fun). After seeing this build by Michael Kanemoto, however, I am thinking that perhaps I threw away that third wheel too soon. That beefy back tire looks like it can get some serious traction, ready to rip up the surface of some alien planet in the quest for more speed, akin to a souped up Polaris Slingshot on steroids.

The frame is made of clips and bars, creating a technical-looking structure that is light and sturdy. Technic panels are placed on the outside to give it clean lines and a definite space-y vibe. I love the greebling of the underside of the cockpit area, including the old classic space flashlight and the ski. The massive transparent light blue canopy adds flair, comprised of several different elements that work well together. The trans-light blue is picked up in the hubcaps of that enormous drive wheel, explicitly in the knob at the center and hinted at by the layered printed dishes stolen from General Grievous and Isla Nublar visitors. I just hope those big wheels keep on turning, carrying the driver home to see his kin.

Build your own classic pickup truck [Instructions]

If you are like me, building cars and trucks that look like the real thing in LEGO is challenging. I can handle castles and spaceships, but real-world stuff is hard. Fortunately for me, and for you if you are like me, Norton74 is here to help us out, generously sharing instructions and parts for a sweet looking set of wheels. It ain’t sexy, and it ain’t fast, but it looks just right – like it just pulled a trailer full of hay bales down the back roads of Iowa. All it is missing is some rust, but you could add that with some custom stickers or dark orange bits placed in just the right spots.

See the instructions here

A roving defender of the land

Whenever LEGO releases a big set, talented builders the world over get inspired to build similar models, but better and more epic. You see it with UCS LEGO Star Wars sets, modular buildings, castles (from Helm’s Deep to Hogwarts), and Batmobiles. It also happens in the LEGO Technic world; LEGO releases a 42110 Land Rover Defender, and out of the woodwork start crawling rugged off-roaders like this one by Manuel Nascimento. Not only did Manuel build an enormous and detailed Defender, but he also built a whole display base to demonstrate its capabilities. You can sleep on a Land Rover? That’s intense (get it? in tents?). But the lights and winch work, and it has a working transmission, too, and could in theory drive. But since it weighs in at 14.33 lbs (6.5 kg) driving it is a bit out of the question. Who cares, though, since looking at it is such a treat.

Custom stickers give this a sleek look, honoring a Camel Trophy competition team as well as the builder. It’s got all the details, too, from the cages and bars to the snorkel. The nets in the rear windows look great, and I love the huge knobby tires. My favorite parts usages are the socket wrenches for the door pulls and the DUPLO shovel mounted over the front right wheel. Droid arms serve beautifully for the hood latches, too. Now, I said this was built in response to the new LEGO Defender; that’s not properly true, since this was originally built back in 2017, but it is still an epic ride.

And if you enjoyed this Land Rover Defender, you might also like a pair of Land Rover Defenders by Peter Carmichael.

North Pole or bust!

I love Christmas as much as anyone. In fact, I would wager that I love it more than most people. But I have to admit that my jaw clenches, a tic twinges in my cheek, and my guts churn when I start seeing Christmas merchandise and commercials before Thanksgiving. I once worked at a store where the Holiday displays came out at the beginning of October, and I had to see them almost every day for three months. It was torture. And the Christmas songs played on a loop piped into the stores – don’t even get me started on how much I despise all 3,000,000,000 versions of “Jingle Bell Rock”. That being said, I do appreciate a good LEGO build when I see one, even if it is Santa Claus at the start of November. Kale Frost had the opportunity to build a huge Christmas display for a mall out of LEGO bricks, and the head of the Head Elf is particularly noteworthy.

The bushy white eyebrows make good use of some wings, and the clips are surprisingly effective as eyelashes. I love the clear blue eyes and the jolly face. This Santa looks like he needs some more cookies, though, since that neck is not as, ah, girthy as I would expect. It doesn’t look like he is hiding multiple chins behind that LEGO beard, and he is hardly ruddy. Perhaps this is Santa after some weight loss and exercise, getting swoll in the North Pole Crossfit Gym. Not that it really matters, as long as he leaves me some presents under the tree — the kind that make the proper rattling noise when shaken.

Send those undead warriors running back to their mummies!

I love winning. Nothing quite compares to the thrill of victory, whether that is beating your friends at a casual game of Scrabble or annihilating your four-year-old son in an epic basketball throwdown where you channel prime Wilt on a six-foot net. John Snyder loves winning, too, and also loves seeing the bad guys lose. In his latest massive diorama, John depicts the forces of the wicked Desert King, a resurrected mummy-wizard, being routed by the armies of good Queen Ylspeth. I haven’t seen this many mummies running away since Brendan Fraser was a major Hollywood star, and it looks great. Everywhere you look, there are highly detailed buildings, ornate arches, intricate domes, meticulously-laid streets, and more.

See more of Al Tajir here

A glowing write-up of a glowing build

When it comes to making superb creatures out of buildable figure parts, no builder is better than Jayfa. From dragons to dinosaurs, monsters to men, Jayfa can build them all and make them look amazing. This latest creation is no exception. Called the Oracle Dragon, it has glow-in-the-dark antlers, spines, and eyes, along with the coolest mustache since Lando Calrissian. It was inspired by a stop-motion puppet, and does a great job of capturing the look. With the posability of the joints, one could feasibly use the LEGO model for stop-motion movies, as well. That’d be cool.

The wing elements from Legends of Chima look great as the tufts on the tail, and I love the translucent pieces on the underbelly of the beast. In fact, the whole color scheme is fantastic, including the splash of red on the back of the head. The antlers make interesting use of minifigure hands and flex tube for their unique shape (but don’t tell the purists, because I think the flex tube has been cut!). The best part of it all, though, is that face. I’m going to have to study the face to copy it for a dragon of my own down the line, because it is incredible, so simple yet so expressive. Curious what the eyes and antlers look like glowing? Here it is: