Moments after accidentally crushing the center of a model ship it took him nearly a year to build, LEGO hobbyist Scott Fowler snapped out of it.

“That’s when I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to build that again. What else can I build?’” Fowler said of his first shipbuilding attempt. “Well, what about the Titanic?”

Starting as a childhood hobby, Fowler, 35, has a unique affinity for building and designing models, particularly from materials created by toy makers LEGO. His Highlands neighborhood home is ringed with hand-assembled replicas of all manner of boats, planes, robots and the like.

But tucked away in the “hobby room” is his masterpiece: a 23-foot long, 3-foot wide model of the legendary RMS Titanic. Built to scale and designed from scratch, his creation is so large he wasn’t able to display the ship’s flag jutting out from the stern. He claims the

Guinness Book of World Records turned him down only because his project is too specific.

“But it’s definitely the biggest they ever heard of,” Fowler said.

A stay-at-home dad to two children — his wife works in downtown Kirkland — Fowler’s most recent LEGO obsession started by accident; or rather, he would say, as the result of one.

He was left with limited use of his hands after a serious 2002 car accident. Stopped in Interstate-405 rush hour traffic, his car was struck from behind at full speed by another motorist who hadn’t noted the slow-down. It took doctors nearly 40 surgical procedures to put Fowler’s body back together.

The injuries were compounded by a rare genetic disorder, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, from which Fowler suffers. The disease affects how the body synthesizes collagen, the main protein in the body’s connective tissues. That lack of collagen meant both an extended period of recovery and a severely restricted range of motion of his hands — his wrists are now completely fused.

Part of his physical therapy regimen included restoring the strength to his hands and arms, and when he returned to his LEGO hobby after the accident, doctors noted an immediate improvement in his arm strength.

“They told me if that was what I was doing to keep it up,” he said. “But it’s like a beaver that wears down his teeth. You have to constantly keep at it.”

He has long since lost track of how many pieces, or “bricks,” he’s put into the ship, but Fowler estimates the number around 250,000 and the total weight at over 1,000 pounds. Despite the weight, nearly the entire structure is snapped together, although Fowler admitted to pasting the rigging together with a dozen tubes of super-glue.

He found and purchased the thousands of custom-ordered parts from a specialty Web site, bricklink.com, and detailed the rest with parts found at the LEGO store in Bellevue. Even a small figure, a la Leonardo Di Caprio, stands at the tip of the ship’s bow. All told, it’s cost him $15,000 and more than a year and a half of his life, though he’s still adding details here and there.

“I’m going to get some deckchairs for up (on the deck), to make it look busy,” he said.

Fowler believes he can put his “bricks” to work full-time as a LEGO “artist.” Every October, Seattle plays host to one of the largest public exhibitions of LEGO creations in the country. Featuring some works using hundreds of thousands of pieces, LEGO Hobbyists meet every October at Seattle Center for BrickCon. Participants bring their intricate creations and custom kits to compare and sell. He plans to do the same with his model of the Titanic, which is divided into several sections for easier transport. This year will be the third time he’s displayed large-scale LEGO creations there.

Now that he’s putting the finishing touches on his work, Fowler is already planning another LEGO creation for next year – a flashing lighthouse perched over a hidden pirate’s treasure trove – that he might display at the Kirkland Art Walk.

But first he’s got to finish the Titanic.

“Oops,” he said, peering over the deck. “This is going to sound really stupid, but there’s a spot I missed.”