Comment by bloopernova | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bloopernova | Hacker News Reader

I recently got back into Lego via buying Avengers related sets. I'm in my mid 40s and our kid has moved out.

I didn't set out to do this, but I've found that assembling Lego sets and idly putting together my own creations has really helped with anxiety. Just being able to follow the instructions and sort through different bricks is an exercise in Zen and mindfulness that I hadn't realized would be so effective.

Similar with jigsaw puzzles my wife and I assemble together, Lego takes me away from work and life stresses for an hour or two. PC games are also a source of escape, and reading too. All of these seem more effective than watching TV or reading/commenting on Reddit.

I recently bought a Lego Avengers SHIELD Helicarrier second hand. It was already assembled but covered in dust. I've disassembled the whole thing and can't wait to spend a few hours putting together all 3,000 pieces :) https://rebrickable.com/sets/76042-1/the-shield-helicarrier/

I think my current favourite "set" was a "MOC" (my own creation) designed by someone else that I bought the pieces for. The pieces were bought from a Danish and a German seller, and were very easy to get via Brick Link. Behold, the Lego Rocinante from The Expanse: https://imgur.com/gallery/1sCBWNe

If you are looking for a hobby, getting into Lego is something I can recommend for those of us lucky enough to have disposable income. Once you start registering on www.rebrickable.com and www.bricklink.com you can catalogue your sets, see what your pieces can build, buy spare parts and discover thousands of amazing models designed by people all over the world.

Have fun building!

If you're looking for another Zen like hobby, try soldering. You can get a Hakko iron [1] for $100 and fun kits [2] for under $20.

Few activities put me in a state of peaceful tranquility like soldering in quiet solitude. Summer nights soldering with the window open listening to crickets in the background. Heaven on Earth.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANZRT4M/

[2] Elenco FM Radio Kit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004YHZE0G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Fq...

I've never learned to solder and I bet my 10 year old would love to learn with me. I'm gonna get those kits. Thanks!

What a throwback to my childhood! I spent countless late nights as a teenager in my parents garage soldering away doing exactly that. To this day, I love any chance I get to solder something. I don't get to do it as much as I used to with everything I work on being surface mount, but it makes the moments even better when I get to.

Thanks for the memory!

IKEA furniture assembly is also an option.

This is awesome! Thank you for the suggestion. I’ve wanted to get into old PCs, Macs, and consoles from the 80’s and 90’s but a lot of these machines have capacitors that need to be replaced lest they leak electrolytes all over the boards. Getting an iron and some kits is a great way to practice before attempting to fix an old computer!

aren't the fumes bad for your health and can lead to MS and other nerve related disease?

Yep! As-such a lot of people like myself only solder in well-ventilated areas and/or use fume extractors, ie: https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-FA400-04-Bench-ESD-Safe-Absorbe...

Had a similar experience with gunpla. I put together a few model kits as a kid and liked it up until it was time to paint, glue and apply decals so I assumed model making outside of Lego was not for me.

Fast forward to mid twenties and someone on a podcast mentions how fun gunpla is because it's model making but it is only as complicated as you want to make it. So I bought a basic RX-78 for about $10 on Amazon and found it to be an incredibly relaxing hobby. I've now got my roommate into it and we're looking at putting together a portable painting booth so we can try our hand at custom paint jobs.

If the idea of assembling mecha that do not require glue, paint, and minimal stickers (i actually don't bother unless it's a larger one) sounds appealing it's worth picking up an HG set on Amazon and some snips (there's some $10 starter sets of tools out there that are decent).

I've got young kids, and regularly play with jigsaws and lego with them.

I also find both these activities kind of "calming" and satisfying. Sometimes I think I enjoy it more than the kids :)

My wife and I have found on several occasions we sit down with the kids to play Lego with them, then realise the kids left a while ago and we're still making our buildings/creations etc.

I also really enjoy just following the instructions and building a set. Very relaxing. But the sets started to pile up so I no longer buy any. I wish there was a good way to build a set, enjoy it for a week or so then return it. There is one LEGO rental company, but I never took a shot on them due to some bad reviews.

LEGO offers instructions for all their sets, so having parts opens new possibilities: https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/buildinginstructions Of course, there are some special parts (like robot joints), one can buy them online or improvise with existing parts.

That's not a bad idea. It'd require keeping pieces organized, but that's also kind of relaxing in its own way if you have the personality for it.

Actually, you could keep all the pieces mixed up in a giant bin. That's what we do. As my daughter said, "the fun is in finding just the piece you need"

I bought a couple big technic sets and enjoyed putting them together but I don't really have anywhere to display them. I'm thinking maybe bringing them to the office is ok. They're sort of in our industry. Would that be weird?

I think that would be really cool, and a good discussion piece.

I wanted to buy old buckets of Lego Technics pieces because for tiny electromechanics project they're perfect prototyping material.

I love assembling those Revell scale models, it requires some patience and craftiness but the results are rewarding.

Same here with 1:72 kits and dioramas. It's wasted on kids

I've been going through my childhood collection and sorting and categorizing into parts bins. It sounds horribly tedious, but it's actually very, very relaxing.

This is how I got into digging big holes and filling them with structures in Minecraft while listening to podcasts. It's a good way to reset.

I had fun soldering together Heathkits, and wound up with something useful at the end! (One was a PDP-11 computer, that I idiotically sold.)

Thank you for turning me on to bricklink! I wasn't familiar with that site and I was disappointing by what Lego was offering.

Lego owns bricklink so technically they still are offering this

Lego purchasing Bricklink happened fairly recently.

I'm hoping they don't screw it up.

What I'm really hoping is that Lego starts fulfilling demand for old sets (please start making classic space sets again), but I doubt it.

They really should do a Disney Vault type deal, and rerelease some of their back catalog periodically. They tried this once around 2000, and I was able to get a couple of classic Castle sets, but it was sort of a one-off.

In some cases, they don't have the molds to make some of the parts anymore, but even if they had to substitute some parts, people would buy them.

It's been four or five years since I've bought anything new from Lego; the few original themes aren't that appealing, and the licensed stuff is pretty tired as well (how many times do you really want to buy slightly different Millenial Falcons or Hogwarts Castles?).

I can't believe they would have problems reengineering molds for old parts.

The host of chinese high-quality knockoffs show this is possible, economical, and probably not even difficult.

I've heard the monorail space sets are so expensive because of the "lost mold" problem. I'd understand if the parts only existed in old video footage, but there literally are thousands to tens of thousands of examples of this, available on the open market for a pittance to a large multinational multimedia company.

I've heard there are people that invest in Lego, but who cares about these people? And if you really care about them, just release sets with small variations from the original.

I think they should go the upscale route, just release massive all-in-one sets of all the sets from a year, like 1979 classic space or the explorien.

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