Charles’s only critique for his pro-
fessional counterpart lies in the
minutiae. He points out that the offi-
cial model’s radar domes are cocked
at an improper angle. “They made the
same mistake on the Star Destroyer
they published in 2002,” he says.
“A lot of fans were hoping they would
correct that.”
You can buy Henrik’s official
set online or in a LEGO store, but
Charles’s home creation is for sale, too,
in a way. You can purchase his gargan-
tuan instruction booklet, plus a parts
list, for $50 on the fan site Rebrick-
able, which houses such information
for more than 15,000 custom sets.
“Not all LEGO fans are designers.
Personally, I’m a ‘follow the instruc-
tions’ guy,” says Rebrickable founder
Nathan Thom. “I began Rebrickable
because I had thousands of pieces I
collected from sets and wondered if
there was something else, already
designed, I could build with them.”
On Rebrickable, builders upload their
personal inventories of LEGO parts,
and the website produces a list of
other models (plus instructions) you
can put together with those pieces.
Rebrickable also provides alternate
builds you can make with parts from a
single set. For example, the 174-piece
Mighty Dinosaurs set offers alternate
builds for 52 other designs, including
an elephant, a helicopter, a scorpion,
and a crab.PRINT THEM YOURSELF
What if the LEGO piece you want
doesn’t exist? There’s a world of cus-
tom 3D-printed LEGO pieces. Joe
Trupia runs Citizen Brick, a printing
company that designs and publishes
pieces the family-friendly LEGO
Group won’t release. Citizen Brick
has sold LEGO barbed wire, beer,
dozens of different guns, figurines
with cleavage, and a few iterations of
the “botany enthusiast,” a figurine
toting a bong.
Trupia makes his bootleg bricks
by melting down preexisting LEGO
pieces and pouring the liquid into 40
injection molders. These molders are
similar to what the LEGO Group runsin their factory in Denmark, but Tru-
pia admits Citizen Brick’s setup is
low-tech. Each molder holds a quar-
ter pound of LEGO bricks and must
be refilled manually via a foot-pedal-
operated hopper. The molder
accepts small LEGOs whole, but it
uses a grinder to break down larger
bricks. LEGO has used the same
polymer—acrylonitrile butadiene
styrene—since 1963, and Trupia’s
machines melt it down bet ween 375°F
and 400°F, depending on the volume
of plastic, its color, and the size of the
mold. Some bricks face temperatures
as high as 525°F.
Trupia admits he walks a fine line
between homage and bootleg. “We
were really proactive when we started
up, asking [the LEGO Group] what
they wanted us to stay away from,
especially franchise-wise.” The LEGO
legal team provides Citizen Brick with
disclaimers for their products, but
Trupia still treads carefully. Citizen
Brick won’t produce Star Wars toys,
for example.
Still, Trupia doubts custom-printed
LEGOs will take over the market. “It’s
probably inevitable [people will use
our custom pieces],” he says. “But
3D-printed pieces are not going to
get anywhere close to the produc-
tion quality of the real deal anytime
soon.” Indeed, if you play around with
3D-printed pieces, you’ll find they’re
often irregular, brittle, and hard to
click together. From what Trupia’s
seen, customers have no patience
for that. “They’re incredibly loyal to
LEGO,” he says. “Frankly, Citizen
Brick wouldn’t exist if we didn’t pay
the proper respects to the LEGO
design aesthetic.”
So fan creators like Charles
Anderson will stick with original
and secondhand bricks rather than
the remolded knockoffs. The classic
LEGOs haven’t changed in 62 years,
but modern builders are more ambi-
tious, resourceful, and inventive than
ever. Today, your first custom build can
be a titanic, personal, one-of-a-kind
masterpiece—and perhaps something
as impressive as a 44-pound, 20,000-
brick Imperial Star Destroyer.LEGO REVOLUTION
continued from page 53BUILDING MY OWN AIRPLANE
continued from page 35
intimate, but it’s more so when you’ve
built the plane yourself. As a pilot, you
have to be ahead of the airplane or
you’re in trouble. In a kit plane, whether
it’s in f light or on the ground, you’ll
always know exactly where an issue is
because you’re the one who assembled
it. There’s a level of pride in whatever
you’re f lying, too: I built this. I’m still
assembling, so I don’t have that full
sense of attachment yet, but once I sit
in the pilot’s seat, it’ll hit me.
I have a newborn at home, so now
I’m going through all of this with
safety in mind. All the decisions I’m
making come down to feeling capa-
ble. If I don’t feel capable, I’d rather
find people who are more experienced
to perform the task. For example: I’m
hiring a professional test pilot for my
first f light with the TSi. You have to
stall the airplane, test the maneuver-
ing, take it up to max speed, and verify
everything the manufacturer tells you
the plane can handle.
These days, I’ve made planes my life.
I’m a full-time aviation YouTuber. Most
people don’t know how to build their
own airplane or what getting a pilot’s
license entails, and I hope that by doc-
umenting what I am doing on YouTube
I can attract more people to kit planes
and aviation. My channel was taking
off before I decided to build the plane,
and my wife asked if I’d still choose a
kit plane if YouTube didn’t exist. Abso-
lutely. Ever since I earned my license,
my goal was to build a life around f lying.
It took me 20 years to reach this point.
One of the best things about build-
ing a YouTube channel has been the
community I’ve entered. I’ve had peo-
ple from all over the world reach out to
me and say my channel inspired them
to start doing some type of aviation.
It encourages me to keep doing this
more and more. I want to feel like I’m
representing more than Nigerians or
immigrants, like I am speaking for any-
one who has ever wanted to f ly. I don’t
want to get on my channel and say, “Hey,
look at me, I’m a Nigerian immigrant
reviewing airplanes.” I’m doing it for
everyone who has ever looked to the sky,
seen a plane, and thought: That’ll be me
someday. —As told to Jordan Golson
80 March/April 2020