Over the 2010/2011 holiday break, I worked on a lot of Lego models. My kids got some great sets for Christmas, and I finally had time to work on some sets that I’d been accumulating. But the 10179 Millennium Falcon was by far the biggest project we took on.

At 5,195 pieces, this is one of the biggest sets Lego has ever made, and definitely the biggest I’ve ever worked on. It took myself and two friends (and my kids, intermittently) about 14 hours over two days which I consider to be very fast for something this massive.

If you ever take something like this on, here are two important tips to make the process more efficient:

1. Sort your pieces first. We spent about two hours sorting pieces into 12 different bins and about 12 Ziploc bags before we started building. Being able to find pieces quickly made a huge difference, and I’m sure cut our building time down dramatically.
2. Use multiple instruction booklets. One of us used the included instruction booklet while I used a PDF version on my iPad, and another friend used a PDF on a laptop. That allowed us to work on three different parts of the ship simultaneously, then bring them all together when they were ready. (Download the Millennium Flacon 10179 instruction book here.)

And here’s how it turned out: