James May's Lego House

[Over The Hill]

Silly but fun programme. (Just go round to watching it last night)

One fault (sad git alert here) I found with it was that he was aiming to build a lego house not like a normal house but to the strengths (and weaknesses of Lego)

To do this he has problems making a strong beam to support the upstairs floor out of Lego.

Would it not have been easy to step out the thickness of the walls to make them a Y shape in profile to then support the floor above as they did on ancient buildings pre roman arch style.

 

[amnesia]

I would have used LEGO Technic beams with the black pins in between to strengthen them

Was very impressed.


Was that Oz's vineyard ?

 

[Night Train]

I saw this too.

The mistake, I think, was employing designers and arty types to make stuff.

It is easy to make a beam if you understand engineering and Lego. They used too many short bits of unsupported Lego in tension. It would have been better if they used three or four layers of large flat plates to spread the tensile stresses underneath while having a good surface adhesion to the bricks above.

Also they could have used Lego Technic to get some triangulation in the beams.

The woman making the furniture was useless, didn't understand any engineering or Lego at all.

 

[summerdays]

My son for obvious reasons liked the toilet!!!

 

[Night Train]

They could have used smooth plates to line the toilet with. Less chance of that brown brick sticking to the studs.

 

[CopperBrompton]

Was that Oz's vineyard ?

It was at Denbies Vineyard in Dorking.

I photographed a wedding there and were were hoping to be able to take some photos of the bride & groom in the Lego house but sadly it was behind schedule so nothing much had been built by then.

 

[beanzontoast]

The mistake, I think, was employing designers and arty types to make stuff.

The woman making the furniture was useless, didn't understand any engineering or Lego at all.

I couldn't believe it when she started crying. Had to rewind and watch it again.

I went to see the Spitfire he made in the first programme at RAF Cosford. It was unfortunately standing outside the hangar (why?) and there had been some rain - someone had put a little tarpaulin over the model of James May in the cockpit. Good effort though!

 

[Arch]

The woman making the furniture was useless, didn't understand any engineering or Lego at all.

She was, wasn't she? Thank god they had a woman in the beam enginneering team to prove we're not all useless.

I loved it - and I was only watching in black and white, so didn't get the full colour effect!

I also loved the idea that Lego is gradually overtaking the human population, and that maybe no one knows how to turn the machines off....

Presumably Lego bricks could be made brick sized, and still work...? How fantastic to just be able to rebuild and add extensions and so on....

 

[Globalti]

That designer was a prize muppet. She was trying to come across as a personality but she just came across as a pillock.

 

[Arch]

That designer was a prize muppet. She was trying to come across as a personality but she just came across as a pillock.

I think the latter often happens when people try too hard at the former...

Later on, did anyone see the Oz Clarke and Hugh Dennis Christmas Drinks programme after Top Gear? They ended up pedalling a Fietscafe round Hyde Park, or at least Oz steered and Hugh pedalled - I remember he's done L'Etape in the past....

 

[Mr Pig]

The mistake, I think, was employing designers and arty types to make stuff.

Isn't it always?

 

[PapaZita]

It is easy to make a beam if you understand engineering and Lego. They used too many short bits of unsupported Lego in tension. It would have been better if they used three or four layers of large flat plates to spread the tensile stresses underneath while having a good surface adhesion to the bricks above.

I wonder if the beams would have worked better if rotated 90 degrees, so that the knobs faced sideways. Not so easy to join to the rest of the house though.

Also they could have used Lego Technic to get some triangulation in the beams.

I suspect that Mr. May may not completely approve of anything so new-fangled. The house seemed to be built almost entirely from "eighters".

PZ.

 

[longers]

Didn't see it but a colleague did and he was telling me about all the patents they take out on all the different permutations of the possible ways of making a lego brick just to stop imitators.

That was the second lego conversation of the month as last week someone else had been telling me about the army of legal experts they need to protect their patents. Loads of em apparently!

 

[LeeW]

It was intresting but as others have said I thought the house was badly designed, it seemed to have very few windows and looked rather 'random'.
I was a very big lego fan as a child and still have alot of it in the attic.
I also wonder why they did not use beams with holes in them I've made some strong beams myself by putting bricks with holes along the top and bottom of the beam and then attaching vertical holed bricks to the sides to tie the whole lot togeather.
Apparently there were problems with rain when james was sleeping in the house. It is actually possible to make a waterproof roof from lego by overlapping plates in a fashion simular to a flat tile roof.

 

[Night Train]

I wonder if the beams would have worked better if rotated 90 degrees, so that the knobs faced sideways. Not so easy to join to the rest of the house though.

I found that sideways bricks dont 'stick' as well due to bending moment along the length of the brick causing the studs to pull out. The usual way to seperate bricks is to bend along the joint to 'snap' them.

I suspect that Mr. May may not completely approve of anything so new-fangled. The house seemed to be built almost entirely from "eighters".

I guess Lego Technic will need to have been around for 50 years or more before May finds it acceptable.
Maybe he was limiting himself to using "eighters" but that would seem a bit stupid IMO. Having said that, he is s TV personality...