Video: Woodbridge student’s amazing Lego talent is a web winner

AN inventive Suffolk student, who turned his unique hobby into an internet sensation, is about to have his ideas published in book form.

Woodbridge School sixth-former Jack Streat’s online videos have received millions of views from people fascinated by his painstakingly accurate replicas of guns - made from toy building bricks.

And the 17-year-old is now looking forward to seeing his design in print after a Californian publishing house picked up on the hype and offered him a book deal.

Jack, who lives in Woodbridge and is hoping to study engineering at university, has a collection of working reproduction weapons, including a sniper rifle and combat shotgun.

His love of complex construction began in childhood and has since developed into a skilful gift. “I’ve been building things for as long as I can remember,” said Jack, whose AK-47 demonstration video has received almost three-and-a-half million hits on Youtube.

“I started to move to robotics aged 10 or 11 and then to more mechanical stuff. Eventually it evolved into guns.”

Each replica Jack creates has a working mechanism - and some even fire toy brick bullets with astonishing accuracy.

His talent has not gone unnoticed by publishers at No Starch Press, who he has been working in collaboration with to release a book on the subject on May 11.

Jack, who won an Arkwright Scholarship for his design work in 2010, posted his first video - of a replica Desert Eagle semi-automatic pistol - on a website designed for building brick enthusiasts to share their creations. It quickly took off and Jack’s subsequent recordings were widely lauded by bloggers across the globe.

Jack’s book will showcase a collection of complete building instructions for four truly impressive 1:1-scale replicas of the world’s most iconic firearms - a Desert Eagle, an AKS-74U assault rifle, a jungle carbine and a pump action shotgun.

His involvement in putting the book together has been equally as engaging as its subject matter, as Jack explained: “My computer images of the guns have been rendered by No Starch into something that looks professional and that people can easily read. Some of the designs are more complex that others but they all work on a similar concept to the foam dart guns that are very popular.”

Multi-talented Jack, who can also count playing guitar among his skills, made clear that he carried out his hobby with the utmost attention to safety, saying: “It’s all about the fun challenge of constructing complex replicas.”