To LUGNET HomepageTo LUGNET News HomepageTo LUGNET Guide Homepage
 Help on Searching
 
Post new message to lugnet.storageOpen lugnet.storage in your NNTP NewsreaderTo LUGNET News Traffic PageSign In (Members)
 Storage / 1517
1516  |  1518
Subject: 
Re: Sorting Bley and Chocolate Brown
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.storage
Date: 
Sun, 23 Jan 2005 17:36:32 GMT
Viewed: 
7673 times
  
In lugnet.storage, John Barnes wrote:
In lugnet.storage, Ross Crawford wrote:
In lugnet.storage, Mark Bellis wrote:
For those of us who have not abstained from the new colours, how have you sorted
them with the rest of your collections?

I too mix all my greys. Having a mostly technic collection, I don't have much
new brown, but it will be mixed in too. I have already built MOCs that mix the
greys, and have no problem with it. If I build something that just has to be
unmixed... well I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.


Me too! Light grey is light grey. Occasionally a new color piece really stands
out so I simply discard it back into the tub and grab for another. My collection
is still mainly old, so that procedure works well. The only real problem is my
building room lighting isn't the best, so I often don't notice new colour bits
mixed in with old. The only time it "shows" is at shows :) They often have
flourescent lights and that seems to make it a little more noticeable. But I
really don't care that much.

After all, compare a blue 1x2 brick with a blue 1x2 brick with technic stud.
They are about as different as the two light greys, but I've used them side by
side just recently and although you can notice it, it doesn't worry me.

It's because of shows that I'm more strict with colours.  I've been working on
the track bed of my railway layout, using lots of packs of grey plates.  It
wouldn't look right with bley or dark bley ballast.  Besides that, the old grey
track sleepers would look silly alongside bley or dark bley parts.

I find the bleys too bright to be realistic for most railway applications,
though some train roofs could be light bley.  Dark bley would be best as steel.
I think track sleepers could be light bley, representing concrete.  The ballast
could then use light grey or light bley, since with concrete sleepers the
ballast is usually equally bright or darker than the sleepers.

I did notice the difference when a few 1x2 light bley plates snook in, having
been sorted into the same box.

Your suggestion of a fluorescent light is interesting - the blueness of the
light highlighting the difference between grey and bley.  Don't they produce UV
light that would cause yellowing?

(Please don't fut to color, that's not what this is about!)

As far as storage goes, I tend to follow the sort by shape philosophy as
previous described in this thread. I find it a lot easier to browse amongst a
tub of 45 degree slope bricks looking for blue parts as opposed to looking
through a tub of blue parts looking for a 45 degree slope.

My collection is at a transition point where I have enough common shaped parts
(1x1, 1x2, 2x2, 2x4 bricks etc) that I have individual shoe-box sized tubs for
each type in each common colour with an "assorted" tub for less common colours
like pink, orange, light yellow etc. The advantage is that if that tub starts to
grow, its usually because a colour starts to become more common, so then you
just start a new individual tub for that colour and segregate them.

How much Lego do you have?  I haven't got as far as using 2 litre ice cream tubs
per colour yet, and I have 400,000 parts.  I've recently gone up to 3 ice cream
tubs for the common 1x2 plates, with a smaller pot for the less common ones.  I
do have more 2x4s though, stacked in 4x4 square stacks per colour, now filling a
large crate.

I usually stack the parts that will stack, so that I can easily grab a few at a
time and so that I know how many I have without having to keep a list up to date
for thousands of piece types!  It also makes finding one colour easier if
they're in stacks.

I use the shoe box sized "steralite" from Walmart which are usually 79c and
somtimes have BOGO. This makes them about the cheapest storage I've found. They
have little bimps in the underside which fit into a recess in the lid, so they
stack. If they are less than about 50% full, you can nest them instead.

I've found some sets of boxes with lids (keeps the dust out!).  The largest is
60x40x30cm, then 40x30x20cm then two of 30x20x15cm.  I have 26 sets of these,
using the largest crates for exhibitions, containing track or buildings, or for
wheels or large bricks, the medium ones for each size of 1xn brick (each nearly
full now) and the small ones for many different piece types.  Add to this over
100 2l ice cream tubs and 20 cabinets with drawers in, ranging from 0.25l to 1l
per drawer.  Several of these have technic parts, SNOT parts, clips or small
plates sorted by type, as I use these most often.

I put several types together if I use them less often, such as crane parts,
radar dishes, Bionicle parts, technic bodywork, gear blocks etc..., keeping the
most common parts closest to the workbench.  I recenly put technic parts of a
certain size in their own pot, since sorting them all out took more time.  I
think it's important to keep the sizes similar if you do this.  I have one pot
with 1x1x3 size pieces.  Liftarms are in several pots, due to their usefulness
and variety of sizes.

When I'm in build mode, I just spread the shapes and colours I'll need all
around the room and have at it.

This scheme has affected my sorting procedure too. I now sort in two phases.
Intial sorts into big tubs of parts of a kind and then final sorts from the
intermediate big tubs into the coloured storage tubs if the colours have to be
seperated. Since I have one stack of 2x2 and 2x4 tubs for the different colours,
I initially sort all 2x2 and 2x4 bricks into a single big tub, while other parts
like 1x2 and 1x4 go into another big tub which gets sorted in the stack of 1x2
and 1x4 storage tubs. Sounds long winded perhaps, but there are simply too many
different parts and colours to be able to sort in one go. Well within the
confines of my space. Actually, I think you'd be hard pressed to array storage
tubs for every shape and colour and keep them all within arm's reach, but then,
this is lugnet, so I have no doubt I'll find out how within the next 60 minutes
:)

JB

I do two sorting stages too.  The semi-sort uses tray boxes that I've kept,
particularly Yodas and Backhoe excavators, with one each for 1xn brick, 2xn
bricks, plates, slopes, technic, SNOT/hinges etc...  I stack the parts in these
trays and the lids keep the dust off.  When I have a suitable quantity of a type
or have finished, each box can be put away more quickly because that type of
piece lives in one area.

The trouble is I buy so much Lego that I always have a stack of sorting trays on
the go.  Mitigating this is my tendency to see a set that will be most useful
and buy them in multiple.  I bought twelve Motor Movers Monkeys (4094) recently
when they were cheap, so they quickly sorted into stacks of each type.  This set
has ended up with a medium box half full of bley parts, hence my original post.

For sorting multiple sets I often sort the bags by type first, opening one type
at a time from all the sets and stacking straight away.  This has worked well
with the statues too, the largest batch being 6 statues of liberty.

I'd still like to buy individual types of parts cheap by the thousand though.
That would save more sorting time as I could just count them and leave them in
their bag.

For pieces where I have many of each colour, I'm now leaving them all in the
same box because the ease of finding each colour is equal.  An example is 1x1
tiles, since I bought a load in order to have a stock to do SNOT letters.
Several lettered MOCs were previously stalled when I kept running out of parts.
This, however, is one of the problem areas for sorting in the bleys.

Mark



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Sorting Bley and Chocolate Brown
 
(...) Me too! Light grey is light grey. Occasionally a new color piece really stands out so I simply discard it back into the tub and grab for another. My collection is still mainly old, so that procedure works well. The only real problem is my (...) (19 years ago, 22-Jan-05, to lugnet.storage)

11 Messages in This Thread:






Entire Thread on One Page:
Nested:  All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:  All | Brief | Compact
    

Custom Search

©2005 LUGNET. All rights reserved. - hosted by steinbruch.info GbR