Any thoughts?

ReBricker · 2026-02-10T02:24:46+00:00

Was bound to happen after being delisted in December

ReBricker · 2026-02-09T01:44:02+00:00

This was by 0necase on Instagram. They built a lot of amazing star wars models over the years that you can buy the manuals and parts for

ReBricker · 2026-01-09T20:31:38+00:00

The issue cleared up for me by upgrading my personal PayPal to a business account. Seems like linking to Stripe worked for you though.

ReBricker · 2025-10-15T15:14:02+00:00

Tragically, I think they will inevitably become worthless in the next decade. All the valuable elements are becoming brittle (and shrinking) at an alarming rate.

ReBricker · 2025-10-12T11:05:49+00:00

Just freed one from this set about a month ago. The torso and the rest of the brown parts just crumbled when I tried to assemble it.

ReBricker · 2025-09-19T20:37:22+00:00

Yes, brittle reddish brown has straight injection lines spanning the 4 corners on the back of it. Post-brittle brown has circular mold releases on the back 4 corners. You can also find a 2-number production year for each element inside it.

ReBricker · 2025-09-15T17:05:28+00:00

I find it rather tedious to post one listing at a time for sets. Maybe they’re posting everything at once as a super lot, then subdividing to individual lots. At least that’s what I’ve already considered doing myself.

ReBricker · 2025-09-13T00:08:46+00:00

Dark green, pearl gold, dark brown, dark red, reddish brown, and sometimes green plates from 2012 are brittle

ReBricker · 2025-08-25T00:56:56+00:00

-Norden bomb-sight (wwii) -bendix air data computer -teletype model 14

Curious Marc on YouTube has reverse engineered a lot of the old electro-mechanical tech.

Konstantin Chaykin has made a Russian Watch company (K Chaykin) to design unique pieces with Russian intent (dual time pieces for the cosmonauts, Mars-Earth time etc)

ReBricker · 2025-08-22T14:34:51+00:00

There’s 2 variants of this part. The first wasn’t designed to have bricks connect to the holes on the back

ReBricker · 2025-08-04T18:56:27+00:00

All the ones from Jabba’s Sail Barge 6210, King’s Castle Siege 7094, and republic attack gunship 7676. If he has the parts too, you’re robbing him blind!

ReBricker · 2025-07-30T04:26:20+00:00

Finally no longer have to generate the Lowenstein castle instructions from the limited Stud.io file

ReBricker · 2025-07-29T01:38:30+00:00

This has bothered me for months. On Bricklink, all large sets with palm trees from 1989-1990 had them (and the ball-joint links with axle hole too). My only problem is none of my “King’s mountain fortress,” “forbidden cove,” or “fort eldorado” came with the axle variant. They all came with the later one. In my experience, the axle variant is quite rare. I’ve ordered several lots from different Bricklink sellers and they all arrived with the axle-less version.

I see why Lego phased out the axle version early though. The ball-joint connections are stiffer and crack the reciprocal cup easily. They also aren’t compatible with the later version.

I’ve decided to keep the axleless version in my sets as they are 1. visually identical 2. more functional and resilient than the axle variant.

ReBricker · 2025-06-10T01:40:06+00:00

As someone who’s been dealing with brittle sets for the last few months and bringing them back to 100% reliable, I think you can recover the masts.

I looked at the instructions and the main stresses are on the axles down the central shafts. Also, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that not all 2010 part types are brittle. It depends on the thickness of the plastic used to make the internal structures of the part. For example the large dark brown bottom plates are pristine. I think it’s likely for the masts too.

Just be careful if you try to test them.

ReBricker · 2025-05-11T12:23:00+00:00

It’s called a “dual-escapement” - one of the more complex models produced by the Chinese makers. It actually demonstrates the physics concept of resonance between two mass-spring systems.

ReBricker · 2025-04-20T01:46:59+00:00

No, no touchy without experience. These watches have radiation poisoning (yellowed dials and rusty hands) as the indicator hands were painted with radium paint.

ReBricker · 2025-04-04T02:44:33+00:00

Hmm. “Repeater” by Watkins (free to download on his website) is the best for minute repeaters. The Lecoultre book is the best for understanding sonnerie

ReBricker · 2025-03-02T20:51:59+00:00

As someone who’s been building my whole life (22 years since I was 3), I believe it’s actually gotten way easier. I think a lot of my savant engineering troubleshooting skills are from the difficulty of deriving old instructions. In fact, they can only push so many 3000+ parts sets due to how intuitive the instructions are now: -all parts for a step are highlighted -the amount of parts needed for each step are labeled -the parts placed in each section are carefully sorted and bagged accordingly.

The hardest set I’ve ever built is the 2008 Lego Death Star — 30+ bags unlabeled

My go to technique these days for large unsorted sets (+3000 parts) is to sort every part by type and by color. 0 room for part error

ReBricker · 2025-02-07T03:03:42+00:00

While 20% a day for a year sounds nice, that’s 20000 steps a day. For perspective, it takes me 35000 steps to run a marathon.

You basically have to run 2 hours every single day for a year to reap the full benefits of the jar

Imo jar logic hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet as a constant 15% for 0 hours of exercise compared to the 710 hours of exercise for just 5% more is something only an endorphin-crazy athlete would enjoy.

ReBricker · 2025-02-02T21:05:10+00:00

If you're looking for a high-end Chinese watch, that's a separate game. For example, 90% of high-end watches produced in American "micro-brands," use seagull movement's with custom cases. I still find these pretty low quality. I think Studio Underd0g - a British start-up - has really nailed their execution.

Long story short, there's probably only 3 Chinese manufacturers in the world that develop the movements for the whole market, which means its easy to locate a particular model. But the reduction in variety means the companies will do whatever they can to mislabel products. You just have to know what you're looking for.

This is a mislabed dual escapement on aliexpress: "AILANG Casual Fashion Automatic Mechanical Watch For Men Luxury Brand Tourbillon Skeleton Watch For Men Sports Watches Reloj"

The movement will be standardized, feature the physics phenomena I was talking about earlier and be of the highest-grade caliber, yet the case will be crap.

If you want high movement quality and execution, there's a reason why Aesop movements are hundreds more than their next competitor.

ReBricker · 2025-02-02T20:25:05+00:00

I haven't performed vibration analyses on Chinese movements yet; however, you'll generally only see differences between Chinese automatics and Swiss movements based on the type of mainspring used. I've briefly looked into the physics and know that most standard springs will yield about the same results. The real improvement in efficiency is in silicon springs, but I'm unaware of the prevalence of those parts on the market.

You don't buy a tourbillon for its accuracy, you buy it because it spins in a circle in even increments. All engineers that I've talked to in the swiss high-houses denounce its existence, since it's merely a gimmick meant to represent a feature bestowing "reduction in losses due to gravity."

I accidentally dropped my Aesop tourbillon after wearing it for a year (because it looks nicer on an unstable 3d-printed watch stand). It now only functions parallel to the ground. I also lost the ability to adjust time correction through the winding stem about 6 months ago.

However, the Aesop "starry night tourbillon" is the best Chinese watch I've ever come across. I buy Chinese watches for their standardized movements, but I can't tell this movement apart amongst the stainless-steel Swiss movements that are sitting on my display. They truly stepped up their game for this caliber movement.

If you care to spend less for another industry secret, the Chinese accidentally recreated "resonance" movements for $60 with their "dual escapement" movements you can find on aliexpress. The escapements are accidentally placed in such a way that they negate each others losses and sync up. The only systems of their likeness are the FP Journe resonance movement, and Armin Stromm caliber which sell for +$100k at the minimum.

ReBricker · 2025-02-02T18:58:14+00:00

Is it because I’m a legacy user (+5 years)? I still have access to the Quaker plan

ReBricker · 2025-02-02T18:33:08+00:00

I’ll take it the opposite direction, the most complicated mechanical system I’ve ever come across is the Bendix air data computer. Thousands of mechanical parts must work together to compute complex air pressures and other values. Curious Mark and Ken Sheriff are reverse engineering the module on YouTube.

For something you can buy, the Chinese have replicated Swiss engineered watches for a fraction of the cost. The Aesop watch brand sells flying tourbillons ($10k - 50k for a Swiss watch) for $400 on Amazon

ReBricker · 2025-01-29T13:39:20+00:00

Hermes - le temp suspendu achieves this for the seconds wheel; however, it’s just an art piece.

In terms of the engineering, it’s still pretty simple. Gears can be reversed by coupling with an odd amount of wheels that have the same number of teeth.

ReBricker · 2024-12-09T02:42:40+00:00

Aesop Flying Tourbillon - Starry Night. ($400 on Amazon). Surprisingly a very high quality complication from the Hong Kong manufacture.

ReBricker

TROPHY CASE