From this:
to this:
in less than 14 days…
Follow the journey of a piratical spaceship in the making!
The first thing, of course, was the concept… a Ninjago Skybound (in other words, sky-pirate) style SHIP, shaped like a swordfish! For those who are unfamiliar with SHIP in all-caps like that, it stands for Seriously Huge Investment in Parts. That’s because to be a proper SHIP, it has to be at least 100 studs long – the length of that white ruler!
The sword part was actually where I started; with my limited selection of chrome silver pieces I didn’t want to run any risks of running out before I hit this part!
Next was the technic frame. This was probably my most extensive use of technic in a creation of my own, but it was more intuitive than I had anticipated!
Next we had to attach the sword segment, and then I got started on the jaw and the bay. Notice the conglomeration of technic pieces right behind the head… that was a mess!
By the time I took another shot, I had covered up the section behind the head with some grey plates… still a far cry from done, though!
I also added some treasure chests on top. In the end, these didn’t open. Notice also the change along the bottom of the side, with the yellow and black stripes getting much thinner!
Here I made some more progress on top. This was a little tricky, since I had to make sure I had enough for both sides. The thing about building a SHIP is, you no longer have “30 dark brown cheese slopes!!” – you have “only 30?!?!”
I spent some time on these cannons, and was quite happy with the final design! As you can see from the next two pictures, they fold down for a greater shooting range!
At this point the cockpit is very rudimentary, just a sort of sketch outline!
This next picture is from the opposite side, so you can see that I wasn’t skimping! I’ve added a prison cell to the back now too…
…and a detachable flying boat on top of that.
I also got some work done on the cockpit. With all the angles here, this whole section was by far one of the most difficult! The silver fist piece, however, incorporated itself beautifully, contributing not a little to the stability of the sword on the front of the SHIP (which, I will admit, did fall over several times during construction; but that was mostly because I didn’t estimate distances correctly when turning it around, so I kept slamming it into the wall…).
We were getting uncomfortably down to the wire at this point, and there was still a lot to do! By the time I took the next picture (for the most part, these were all a day or two apart), I had basically finished the section right behind the head, but between it and the jaw there was still some work needing to be done!
You may notice that the skull and crossbones looks upside-down from far away… I rectified that later on!
Adding a few barrels along the back provided a comfortable slot for the detachable boat.
After about a day or more of solid work, I finally finished the head area, the back, and a couple of fins.
This top fin is probably my favorite part! It was the fin I did first, and it turned out even better than I had anticipated!
The area between the jaw and the six-shooter may look simple, but it wasn’t simple to build! In the end, I compromised with a skeleton covering some unsightly corners.
Another agonizing part to build – the tail fin! I spent at least an hour getting absolutely nowhere… but at last, I was able to settle down to a large fin. While the fin itself is one of the areas that I think ended up most lacking, the engines on either side were quite satisfactory!
At this point, I still had two front fins, the detachable boat, and a couple of vehicles for the bay left to do… and I was a full day behind schedule! But Friday evening saw the last piece built into place, and on Saturday I took pictures of the final result!
(Click the picture to see a high-res version!)
And there she is – the Swordfish, about 110 studs long and 14 days of building! I’ll be writing another post featuring this SHIP with even more pictures of the details in a few days, Lord willing!
If you enjoyed this build log, you may also be interested in:
Geneva D 
What do you think?