I made a Custom Storage Tray for the JMBricklayer 70003 Steampunk Dinosaur Marble Run Building Set

 

Hiya brick fans!  Today, I want to show you my custom storage tray that I built to collect all of the marbles/balls that come with the incredible JMBricklayer 70003 Steampunk Dinosaur Marble Run set.

If you are not familiar, with the set, please take a look at my other blog posts where I document the building of the massive structure along with my thoughts and tips and tricks that I found useful.  The links are here:

Unboxing: https://its-not-lego.blogspot.com/2024/06/unboxing-kickstarter-funded.html

Part 1:  https://its-not-lego.blogspot.com/2024/06/constructing-5391-piece-jmbricklayer.html

Part 2:  https://its-not-lego.blogspot.com/2024/06/building-5391-piece-jmbricklayer-70003.html

Tips and Tricks: https://its-not-lego.blogspot.com/2024/07/jmbricklayer-70003-steampunk-dinosaur.html

Here's the marble ball tray.  It will hold all 10 of the marble balls that come with the JMBricklayer 70003 Marble Run set.  I made it because I found I had no place to put all of the marble balls.  They kept rolling around the base and dropping to the floor.  And during play, whenever some of the marbles would come flying off or during troubleshooting, I needed a singular place to collect them, so that's why I came up with the storage tray idea.

These are all of the parts you will need if you want your own tray.

1pc 8x8 plate

4pcs 1x6 plates

4pcs corner 2x2 sloped bricks

7pcs 2x2 sloped brick

1pc 1x2 brick with technic hole

4pcs 1x1 bricks

1pc technic pin 4studs or longer

12pcs 1x2 sloped bricks

optional: 1pc 1x2 tall sloped brick

I had all of the pieces I needed in black, but you can use whatever coloured bricks you have on hand.

The 8x8 plate will serve as the base for all of the other pieces.

Attach the 4pcs of  2x2 corner sloped bricks.

Now, attach 7pcs of the 2x2 sloped bricks.

Insert the technic pin  into the 1x2 brick with technic hole.

Attach the 1x2 brick to the baseplate.

Attach the 4pcs of 1x6 plates to each side.

Attach the 4pcs of 1x1 bricks to each corner.

Optionally, attach 1pc of tall 1x2 sloped brick behind the technic brick. It's purpose is to stop the technic pin from sliding back.

Or you can just omit the previous step.

Finally, attach the 12pcs of 1x2 sloped bricks on all four sides.

The storage tray is complete and ready to be installed into the Marble Run structure.

Locate the free pin location on your marble run structure.   

The exact location is referenced Manual B - pages 186/187 in steps 5-14 and 5-15.

Insert the technic pin of the storage tray into the free slot.  It should now be firmly attached and capable of supporting all of your marble run balls.

I hope you have found this tutorial helpful and it makes your JMBricklayer Steampunk Dinosaur Marble Run even more enjoyable to build and have fun with!    If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to reach out to me in the comments or you can also find me on Instagram and Facebook too!

BTW, the Marble Run campaign on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo are now closed, so if you are hoping to acquire this limited edition set, keep checking the JMBricklayer website to see if/when it becomes available again.

Bye for now!

#jmbricklayer #marblerun #kickstarter

How I Make the Raised Baseplates for my Modular Buildings

 

Hey brick fans!  

Some of you have asked me about the raised baseplates I'm using for my modular buildings, so this blog post will be a small tutorial and  closer look at how they are constructed.  Hopefully it will inspire you and give you some ideas for your own modular buildings.

It's still a work in progress, but I'm slowly migrating my modular building collection from classic baseplates to raised baseplates.  Classic baseplates have a tendency to warp over time and tend to flex when lifted. Raised baseplates give my buildings a cleaner and consistent appearance in addition to providing more structural integrity underneath.  

Just to be clear, my raised baseplates are not MILS plates, since mine have no connection points that allow the modular buildings to be connected to other plates such as roadways or other buildings.  Here's an example of what MILS plates look like: https://www.brickaddict.net/road-plates.  I don't need to have all my buildings attached to each other, because I like to rearrange them all the time for picture taking.

Today, we will look at how I make a raised baseplate for a 16x32 stud modular building, but the technique is the same if you have 32 stud wide modular buildings.  

Essentially we are making a sandwich structure with some blocks placed in between two sets of plates.  On the front of structure we place some SNOT bricks / technic stud bricks to which we will attach a fascia plate.

More on SNOT bricks here: https://bricknerd.com/home/snot-basics-geometry-techniques-and-pitfalls-3-18-2021

Here are all the parts you will need.   First we start off with a classic baseplate (that's the thinner single sided ones.

We then place some bricks on the classic baseplate.  It doesn't really matter the type of bricks that you use as long as you can attach them to the classic baseplate and then attach the regular plates on top.  For our example today, I'm using two pieces of 16x16 plates to place over the bricks, but you could use whatever you have on hand.  

You can use whatever technic bricks you have on hand, this is an example of 3 types of bricks you could use.  The 1x2 brick above will give you the greatest clutch power for attaching the front fascia. For most of my builds, the 1x1 brick with hole and blue pin is my preferred choice.

Here is example one.

Here is example two.

And here's example three. As I have said earlier, it's up to you to use whatever you have on hand and see which method works best for you.

Place the remaining plates on top.

These are the pieces we will use for the front fascia, 1 piece of 2x16 plate and 8 pieces of 2x2 tiles.  I've used dark gray for my fascia but you could use a different colour, just make sure that the plate and tiles are the same colour.

The completed fascia.

The raised baseplate with fascia attached.  It doesn't fit flush to the ground because of the lower baseplate and there's a bit of a riser where it meets your sidewalk.  I kind of like the setup though.

Now just finish off your sidewalk for your modular building.  It probably looks better if you have a contrasting sidewalk colour vs. fascia.  I'm using light gray tiles on my sidewalks so I use dark gray on the fascia.  But you can choose to make yours any colour you want.

There you go, that's how I make my raised baseplates with fascia for my modular buildings.  Hope you have found this information helpful and hoping to see how yours turns out.   Feel free to leave me a comment or question below.  Thanks for looking, bye!

Here's my review of the Briksmax BX016 LED light kit for the Lego Downtown Diner

Hey brick fans, welcome back to my blog!  Today I'll be reviewing the Briksmax LED Lighting kit BX016 for the Lego modular Downtown Diner.

Thanks to the very kind folks at Lightailing.com who sent me the lighting kit for this review.

If this is your first time lighting a building block set, you are in for a treat, as a lighting kit will make your Lego set really stand out.   Plus, getting a LED lighting kit is a great value because if you were to buy all the individual components separately, they would cost you a lot more.

With the lighting kits you get from Lightailing or Briksmax, you will get free shipping for orders over $49, and they will replace any missing or faulty items, just contact their customer service team to help you out.

The lighting kits are customised for each particular Lego building block set so for this review we will get all the parts necessary to light up the Downtown Diner modular building and make it look spectacular.

There are two manuals for this kit, a User Guide and Serivce Card.  If you want to see what the Briksmax User guide looks like, you can check it out here on the Briksmax website.

There are 14 bags of different parts for the BX016 light kit.

They include an assortment of light strips, led dot lights, expansion boards and connecting wires.  Also included is a separate streetlamp and USB plug.

You also get a tweezer tool, a battery pack and spare parts using real Lego.

The instructions are very detailed and shows you visually how to connect up the light kit.

First we work on the the pink Cadillac from the Downtown Diner as it gets lit up headlights and taillights.  The wires are mounted under the chassis.

Next we swap out the original streetlamp and put the Briksmax provided lamp in.  It contains an LED light and wire that you connect to the expansion board.  I always test out each lighting component as I install them to make sure there are no defects.

The Jukebox gets two flashing multi-colour lights, a very cool effect!

Following the instructions, I added some strip lighting to the front of the building and some uplighting for the Diner sign.

There's an LED light for the lamp on the back stairwell.

Use some more of the LED strip lights and attach them to the underside of the second floor to light up the interior.

Repeat the process of attaching the LED light strips for the second and third floors of the diner.

Here are some sample pages from the instruction manuals.  As you can see they are not difficult to follow.

Not sure if I placed the led lights in the right location under the Art Deco arch?

There's even a flashing red light that gets added to the rooftop spire.

I'm now on a quest to try to light up all of my modular buildings, because the Briksmax LED light sets work so well.  For comparison purposes, my Town Hall modular is lit up using a kit by LeLightGo and the Palace Cinema uses a light kit from Kyglaring.  You can see that the Briksmax kit for the Downtown Diner is a lot brighter.

If you want your Lego city to have a greater impact, you have to add light kits to all of your buildings, they just make such a big difference!  I'd highly recommend you try out one of the Briksmax light kits for yourself and see how it improves the look of your city.

Feel free to check out all of the unique LED lighting kits at Lightailing.com!  And as a special bonus use my affiliate code ITSNOTLEGO2023 to save an extra 10% on all your purchases.

Hope you found this review helpful, see you in my next blog post!   Bye!