SCALE MODEL NEWS

HERE'S SOME FASCINATING VIEWING for you: Bart van Dijk's beautifully smooth animation of building a Lego Death Star. In Bart's build, 4016 individual Lego pieces come together as if by magic. SMN report: The Lego Death Star is a hefty piece of kit, weighing some 6.3 kg (14 lb) when fully assembled. Like other Lego stuff, it's not a true 'scale model' but is visually near enough to make the cut. If you like creatures with your technical equipment, there are plenty of Lego figures ( below ) to choose from. The AT-ST biped walker and TIE fighter are pretty nice to build, and fit neatly into the Lego Star Wars microverse. Lego offers an extremely well engineered model ( below ) of the Millennium Falcon , perhaps the most famous fictional spacecraft of them all. When assembled, the Falcon is not as heavy as the Death Star, but even so it weighs in at some 2.2 kg (4.8 lb), comprised of 1330 components. Star Wars has a galaxy of equipment to choose from, and Lego tr...

SMN report: Earlier this week, we looked at matchstick-modeller Phil Warren's tabletop navy, and now we've been impressed by another modelmaker's dedication to duty. This time it's the work of Brian Bartlett, who has amassed a vast collection of card buildings, ranging from a miniature White House ( above ) to St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.  Building a collection over the years Brian started in 1988, with a model of Canterbury Cathedral, and through the following 17 years built the collection to more than 200 famous, and some not so famous, buildings of the world. Now 79, Brian is still making models, so the collection has room to grow yet. Prinknash Abbey connection Like most modelmakers, Brian's biggest problem soon became the question of: "Where on Earth can I store them all?!" The answer came in the form of a large suite of basement rooms, set in the grounds of Prinknash Abbey, near Cheltenham, UK. The monks of Prinknash (pronounced: "Prin-is...