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LOGISTICS

In June and July 2002, while I was building Takao, I was living in a small apartment on the edge of Highland Park, New Jersey.  The vagaries of the rental market and the poverty of my existence dictated that the amount of space I'd have would be limited, and there was also a substantial academic library also trying to inhabit the apartment not to mention the furniture.  In short, I was effectively working with about 300 square feet of space, with no single dimension greater than twelve feet.  This meant that it would be impossible to assemble the whole ship within the confines of the apartment, and thus that I wouldn't see it together before its debut at Brickfest 2002.

Without the measurements to hand, I can only construct the layout of the apartment from memory.  I remember that the kitchen's largest measure was 12'6", so it may be a bit off; but I have included a rough size outline of Takao for scale purposes.  This diagram cannot unfortunately show the height issue; this was the second floor of a small house, so in the kitchen and bedroom, the ceiling sloped down from 7 feet near the centerline to 3 feet at the windows.  This might give you some indication of the issues I faced--parts were in three different places, display still somewhere else, and the only air conditioned room was the bedroom.  Given that temperatures were in the 90s for most of the construction period, that meant that much of my work had to be done there.  So I got quite a workout running from room to room!  What's more, I still had to live in the place, do my work, and cook my meals, though that last went by the wayside in the last eight or nine days, as costs became less important than construction time.  This crude diagram shows the basic apartment size and layout:

Each day I would go downstairs, pick up whatever brick packages had arrived, sort them into their bins, and continue building on the small table in the bedroom upon which parts chests sat (at the foot of the bed).  I built section by section, and as each section reached upper-deck level, I would put it on the banquet tables in the kitchen and move on to the next.  At the same time I colonized virtually any possible surface to hold pre-sorted parts and assemblies for the next section; this led to some "discoveries" during late construction as I forgot having set certain bits aside.  Such sudden discoveries were in fact very helpful in completing the ship!

METHOD

I eventually built the ship in seven sections.  The points of division are shown in the schematic below.  Only sections 2-6 opened laterally, but I designed the prow and fantail to avoid any obvious indication of absence of the hull panels.  For connection, I used Technic pegs; I do not have a scan of the sheet I used to describe the location of connection points in each section; there was no standard method of construction, and I added in peg bricks--never just Technic pegs themselves--wherever the internal structure seemed strong enough to handle them.  The total number of Technic peg contact points between two sections was usually 10 or 12.  Fewer pegs would have been too weak, and more would have made connection extremely difficult owing to miscompare due to differences in brick compression and the like.  Furthermore, I restricted peg connection to the two hull decks for the same reason; as the most solid construction elements, the miscompare between pegs would be the smallest.  

I chose points of division based on structural elements that would cross several decks or more within the ship.  The most important of those elements were undoubtedly the five HG barbettes (labelled below with their turret letter designations) and the uptakes for smoke from the boilers (the funnels), which are indicated by the ovals amidships below.  Therefore the major features of sections 2-6 are, respectively, barbettes A-C; the forward boilers and funnel; the midships boilers and funnel; the engine room (left empty as the engines were below the waterline in the historical Takao) and the flight deck; and barbettes X and Y.  The prow and fantail, of course, did not open, but were there simply to "cap" the model.  (Of course, for internal detail I did include doors leading to those areas in sections 2 and 6).  In the schematic below, I have also indicated where the catapult mountings are located (the two small circles hanging off the side in section 5) and where the major free-standing gun directors (small circles, section 4) and the conning tower (large shape, section 3) are.  I have not included the 12.7cm gun mounts, which are located in section 3 and section 4 (2 each, symmetrically).

Takao construction schematic.  The horizontal line indicates where the ship opens for viewing.

What this logical division meant practically, and what I did not realize until after construction was complete, was that section 3 would be by far the heaviest section, followed by section 5, section 2, section 6, section 4 (which was the least stable), section 7, and finally section 1.  The weight issue also meant that the three center sections had a tendency to split lengthwise when placed in my car, and to be notoriously difficult to move stably.  Section 4 also had the truly annoying tendency to "drop" megabricks off of its bottom, which required a great deal of repair and compression before the section would again mate with 3 and 5 properly.  Those who helped me with assembly at Brickfest can attest to how difficult the finessing of a proper, tight connection could be after the ship had been moved.

INTERIOR

This ship differs from any of my previous efforts because of its longitudinal fissure.  This feature, beyond what I have described above regarding general issues of stability, changed the way I built Takao like no other feature.  Not only did I need to ensure display appearance above all, but the ease of separation and the omission of features that crossed the line of separation (that horizontal line in the diagram above) meant that there was no way to keep the construction quite as solid as it was in Friedrich der Grosse.  The result, however, was worth the trouble; even from a distance, the flat facet presented by the clean hull separation gave a very handsome cross-section, which can be seen in this photo taken by Todd Lehman at Brickfest.

As is clear from this image, the cross-section included the conning tower and the upper torpedo decks.  This meant that the flue detail and the torpedo-room features required work.  Unfortunately, I was unable before display to complete the flight ready room and aircraft stores located in section 5 under the flight deck, or in the conning tower (section 3).  The barbettes and the boilers, however, all fit neatly between the point of separation and the corresponding opposite point in the hull.  The separated hull outer sections, however, have no detail of any kind; as heavy "slivers" of hull, they required all the reinforcement possible--which precluded detailing.  As it was, I had enough on my hands with the interior to worry about detail nobody was likely to see!

SCULPTING

The bow flare and general sculpt of the hull was probably the most difficult thing I've ever done in LEGO, and it was the only thing that ever made me seriously consider abandoning the project for 2002.  It was easy enough to repeat Friedrich der Grosse and its one-dimensional hull curvature with only a simple modification at the upper levels, but I wanted this to really show a proper 20th-century hull curve.  This meant a lot of very small dark grey plates, and a lot of building and rebuilding to capture a curvature that was both true to the original and also smooth enough to be pleasing.  Finally, I had to allow as well for the upward curve of the deck near the prow--and I had to do all of that while conserving dark grey whenever possible.  It took me approximately four days, eight hours a day, to coomplete the sculpting of sections 1 and 2; sculpting the raised hull side of sections 3, 4, and 5 occupied about two ten-hour days to accomplish in tandem with the completion of those upper decks.

My girlfriend was very understanding of my desire to finish this; she did her work on the computer while I sat on the floor, covered in sweat (yuck!), searching desperately for one more dark grey 1x3 plate!  But the final result was really very nice; it was a less extreme curvature than the historical ship, but it was still very close.  I topped the prow with a white band of tiles and a "meatball" made of four 4x4 quarter-round plates, and called it good.  You can see some of this curvature here as well as the Japanese symbol I added, as well as the Imperial Navy chrysanthemum.  The chrysanthemum has an interesting story--the joke is that it is the single detail around which I designed the entire ship.  This is only partially true, in that I did select the flower and its mounting before I built any other part of the ship, but if another scale had been better I would have changed the mounting.  It's merely fortuitous that I didn't need to.

Takao bow with "meatball" and curvature.  Photo by Todd Lehman.

You can also see, on that image, some of the deck detail, or "greebling", that I added to the ship in the last day or two before I brought it to Washington DC (so late was it, in fact, that I brought a bag of railing parts, 25mm deck guns, and other deck fixtures to add at the show).  My favorite construction detail on the decks, however, must be the "barrels" made with three spoked tires, a 3L axle with stud on the end, a 2x2 round plate with axlehole, and the eminently useful Technic 1x2 plate with Technic arm.  It captures excellently the look and feel of a corrugated 55-gallon drum, or a corrugated motor housing (as this is meant to represent).  I only wish I had more 2x2 dark grey round plates to avoid incorporating so much black.

Barrel construction detail.  Excerpt from a photo by Todd Lehman.

The HG (heavy gun) turrets and 12.7cm multipurpose gun mountings differed in that their necessary form dictated how I could make them function.  Takao's actual HG turrets (8" 40cal twin mountings) actually possessed a significant flare; the design of turrets I used is in fact from the earlier Furutaka type cruisers.  The armament was the same but the turrets were "boxier"; I found that the overall aesthetic quality was still not severely impaired.  A boxier turret also meant that I could have more room inside to install gears for the HG elevation.   The 8-tooth Technic gears used as the external controls are easily visible on the turret pictures below; inside, I used worm gears and, on the guns themselves, 24-tooth Technic gears.  This allowed the guns a maximum elevation of about 50° and a depression of about 10°.  Unfortunately, the fit wasn't perfect, so the worm gears would "slip" when the turrets were inverted or the guns moved by hand.  The 2x2 flag in the center is a cover on the scope, and the diagonal housing atop the turret covers a device used for target dotting (shooting practice).  There were originally also manual scopes in the housings outboard the guns, but that detail vanished when I installed gears for the gun elevation and depression controls.

"X" turret detail:  HG turret with rangefinder incorporated

"Y" turret detail:  HG turret without rangefinder.

Excerpts from photos by Todd Lehman.

The medium weapons mounts were less mechanically involved but more concerned with aesthetics.  I wanted to have both the flexibility for high-angle AA postures and the clearance for full revolution, while still having the mounts be minifig-accessible.  I'm very happy with the way the 12.7cm mounts turned out; the guns themselves look very nice, and the mounting is very close in overall form to the originals.  I took a bit of license in detail on the gun tubs themselves; in the original they only really covered about 300°; the closest LEGO parts to that were a complete circle.  Therefore I've tried to make them work as best possible.

I eventually made these mountings in a "U" shape, holding the gun assembly between them.  The actual DP mounts could not move their guns independently, so the same is true for these.  The sighting station and the platforms are true to form of the original, though there are a lot of rails and gears I did not include.  The mounts are also very stable but have a tendency to pop off of their 2x2 turntables when the ship is packed for transport.

Starboard side forward 12.7cm DP mount, seen from 3/4 aft.

Port side forward 12.7cm DP mount, seen from 3/4 forward.

Excerpts from photos by Todd Lehman.

The Technic pins are in the two 4-stud-wide side housings, and the entire mount is pressed onto the deck.  That's really the weakest point, because it doesn't compress perfectly.  Note from the rear the autoloaders holding the next shell in line, and the trolley in the center that represents the breech control.  From the front, the 4L lightsaber bars represent the gas cylinders that return the weapon after recoil.  By the way, the 8x8 grate behind the gun mount represents the main ventilator for the crew.

The angled forward funnel is also worth a digression.  It's built on an angled Technic frame, designed to produce rows of studs at about 30 degrees off the horizontal; in effect, the Technic pins connect a 30-60-90 triangle.  Above that, the interior structure of the funnel is built upwards in some truly hideous colors, with 2x4x2 bricks with side studs at various points.  Around that, the funnel is "wrapped," using Ninja wall sections on one side and inverse-slope bricks--of which I had so very many--on the other.  The rear funnel follows the same pattern on the outside only; it pulls off of section 4, to which it is only connected by Technic pins on 2x2 plates spaced with a mind to that magical 5/6 ratio.  The funnels also mark the only real epiphany I had at precisely the right moment.  When I started building I had no idea how I was going to angle the funnel without compromising stability, and that solution just emerged.  That dark grey wing plates filled the gap between the forward funnel and the conning tower perfectly was sheer luck.

In all, it took me about three weeks (a few days more, actually) starting around 25 June to build the bulk of the ship.  A lot of the planning had been done in the previous four months, and of course buying started a good year or more before that.  But my normal method was to build from dawn until well into the night, given that I didn't need to teach that summer.  As Shaun Sullivan put it, I'm "actualized by pressure," and the impending deadline of Brickfest certainly had that effect.  Unfortunately, as is immediately clear upon basic comparison, the ship's conning tower is where time gave way to expedience.  I got the general shape working and just built as fast as possible; the final result was OK, but I do still intend to rebuild it at some point (unless I do something crazy, like shave the ship down to the main deck and rebuild it as a Ryujyo-class aircraft carrier...hmmmm).

OTHER CONSTRUCTION DETAILS

Unfortunately, at this time I do not have all of my images from the ship's construction phase with me; I only have a few, which I have included below in thumbnail form.  These thumbnails link to the full-size images, which are precisely 500% the size.  These images are from the first of the four construction spurts, and deal with the early phase of the ship's construction, before carefully-detailed machinery sections and rooms were added.  The second major division was the rear 50% of the ship, including the machinery; the third was hull sculpt and decking; and the fourth was the creation of the superstructure.  Photographs of those latter three phases are forthcoming.  In the meantime, enjoy having a look at the chaos that was three weeks of full-bore construction!

A sample image of some of the parts bins used in construction.	The raw prow, without sculpting or upper-level decking.	The forward two sections, standing, photographed from above.
The No. 2 and No. 3 sections without decking or hull fairings.	Another view of the No. 2 and No. 3 sections.	The raw design for the torpedo tubes, mounted in pairs (4 total).
The No. 2 section, standing, with fairings off.	The No. 1 and No. 2 sections, together, with fairings, standing.	This image, which didn't come out particularly well, is the three forward sections with fairings assembled.  The deck level has been covered, but the bow flare has not yet been added.

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The Brick Shipwright

All text and images copyright 2002 by L. F. Braun or the original photographers.