And not from Manila.
A Filipino joke (or, Pilipino joke):
Question: What do Filipinos call two pilots?
Answer: A pair of pliers. 
So he went top drawer, then?
What do you call a Filipino contortionist?
A Manilla folder.
I bet I could build the iceberg a lot easier
But, would it be an exact replica?
You can’t just pass off any old ice cube as The Berg. 
And don’t forget the streak of red paint.
I guess if I could afford that model, I could afford a big enough bathtub to float it in.
Remember, that boat is 1500 lbs. Nice practical example of “floating a battleship in a bathtub”.
If you counted the hours the guy put into his manilla airlines 777, at a skilled craftsman hourly rate, that plane might cost $1-2M. More, if he made a decent profit.
It would be a lot harder to make it out of plastic or metal. I assume the reason he used Manilla folder is that it is stiff enough to be structural, but you can cut it into shapes with a sharp hobby knife. Metal or plastic would require all sorts of molds and tools and dies and whatnot and generally just be tough to work with at that level of detail.
Or you could build it out of Lego, like this guy who made a Mini-fig scale version of the USS Harry S Truman (CVN-75) (plus it’s air wing and a couple of escort ships_.
…air mail.
My guess is it’s because he could pilfer the folders from the office. Take, say, 2-3 dozen a week.
So, seriously, where do you get the plans for building something as detailed as that? I don’t suppose that he wrote to Boeing asking for some and they said, “Sure, we happen to have some old plans lying around here that you can have. Let us know how it turns out, kid.” I also don’t suspect that if he worked there, they’d be happy letting him take propitiatory information home with him, much less a single manilla envelope. Certainly it’s not something you could do by taking a few (thousand) photos and eyeballing the dimensions.
I went to a Lego art exhibit a few weeks ago. Some of it was Lego reproductions of actual artworks, most of them actual size. But the Sphinx was in Mini-fig scale.
The Titanic model has deck chairs to rearrange.
The plane model is impressive. The guy is Lord of the Files.
:dubious:
At 50 an hour,40 hours per week, 2 million is 20 years of work.
Where are you getting your numbers? The Wikipedia article linked to in the OP says he claims to have spent 10,000 hours making it.
Wait, you don’t mean that real airplane Mom refused to let us fly in?
For a 19 year labor of love, see this amazing 16 foot long 1/72 sale model of the USS Enterprise:
Given an eight hour day, that is three and a half years.
I can’t think of a more horrifying sentence than “employed doing odd jobs in the San Francisco area.” :eek: