Small LEGO Sphere Project

20 January 2002

As a quick LEGO project, I wanted to see if I could put together something that was vaguely spherelike. I arbitrarily selected a size of six inches in diameter which turned out to be a good size for this project.

After I few hours, this is what I ended up with. The sphere is 19 studs wide and 16 bricks from top to bottom. This gives the right overall shape, since the bricks are a little taller than they are wide.

And for completeness, here's what the bottom of the sphere looked like. I built the sphere row-by-row from top to bottom. It's mostly hollow, with the exception of some bracing that was needed near to top and bottom "poles".

Now that I've finished this, I'd like to try something a bit bigger and more elaborate. Although globes have been done before by several people (Eric Harshbarger and Adrian Drake among them) as well as by the wizards at LEGOLand, I'd like to give it a try myself.

One way to make spheres look much better is to use plates as well as standard bricks. Since plates are one-third the height of a standard LEGO brick, you can make much smoother curves. I didn't use plates for this project, but maybe for the next one!

Building Project

The sphere I built is sixteen rows from top to bottom. If you'd like to build your own, here is a rough guide:

Just look at the borders of the sixteen levels above; you don't have to make your sphere solid. In fact hollow, yet strong, is better.

Have fun!

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