The B9 Builders Club is the central community hub for B9 robot replica builders. It predates most social media platforms as an organized community — the forums have been accumulating knowledge, reference material, and builder documentation for over two decades. For anyone serious about building a B9 replica, joining and participating in this community is not optional.
What the B9 Builders Club Is
The B9 Builders Club is a membership organization and forum community for builders of the B9 robot from Lost in Space. It serves several functions that no other resource replicates:
Reference archive — The collective research of hundreds of builders over twenty-plus years. Original prop dimensions, commercial part identification, season-by-season prop variation documentation, and photographic reference from surviving originals. This accumulated documentation is the reason replica accuracy has improved so dramatically over time.
Parts marketplace — Community members periodically run casting operations to produce reproduction parts — specific components that are impractical to fabricate individually. These run-of-show productions are coordinated through the forums, and knowing about them before they close is only possible if you’re an active forum member.
Technical support — When you hit a problem (and you will hit problems), the forums have members who have encountered and solved the same issue. The community’s collective build experience covers virtually every failure mode and difficult geometry.
Build documentation — Member build logs documenting projects from initial planning through completion. These logs are among the most valuable resources available — seeing exactly what decisions another builder made, what worked, and what they’d do differently is difficult to replicate in any other format.
Getting the Most from the Forums
The forums have years of archived threads. Before posting a question, search for it — the answer is almost certainly already documented in an existing thread. Forum members who answer the same questions repeatedly are patient but limited; engaging with archived knowledge before asking shows respect for the community’s time and produces faster results.
When you do post:
- Be specific about what you’re building and where you are in the process
- Include photographs — build questions without photos get slower, less accurate responses
- Specify which season’s configuration you’re targeting
- State what you’ve already tried if troubleshooting a problem
Where to start:
The introductory sections of the forums have threads specifically for new members. Reading these before diving into technical threads provides context that makes the technical discussions legible.
Community Parts and Resources
Several recurring resources come through the B9 Builders Club community:
Reproduction parts runs — Community members with mold making and casting capability periodically produce runs of specific components: collar sections, chest panel detail parts, bubble dome castings, radar section pieces. These aren’t available through commercial channels — they exist only through community coordination.
Audio archives — The community has assembled comprehensive audio libraries from the original series: dialogue, sound effects, and ambient machine sounds. Dick Tufeld’s original voice recordings are the reference, and the community-maintained archives are higher quality than anything available through commercial channels.
Technical drawings and templates — Dimensioned drawings of specific components developed through community research. Not available anywhere else.
What to Expect from a B9 Build with Community Support
Building a B9 replica with community support is a substantially different experience than attempting it in isolation. The practical differences:
Better starting point — Community reference documentation gives you dimensional accuracy before you’ve cut the first piece of material.
Faster problem resolution — Problems that would take weeks of independent research to solve are typically answered in hours on the forums, by builders who have solved the same problem before.
Part availability — Community members occasionally have surplus materials, parts, and tools available to other builders. Convention gatherings (particularly WonderFest in Louisville) are where these informal exchanges happen most frequently.
Accountability — Posting a build log creates mild accountability that independent builders don’t have. The community response to progress updates is genuinely motivating for builders whose projects might otherwise stall.
Starting the Build
For a new builder joining the community, a reasonable starting sequence:
- Join the B9 Builders Club and spend time reading before posting
- Read build logs from completed projects — identify builders whose approach and resources are closest to yours
- Identify your target season configuration (Season 2–3 is the most documented)
- Review community parts availability before deciding what to fabricate vs. source
- Start building foundational skills — mold making and casting if you don’t have them — on smaller projects before committing to B9-scale work
The B9 robot construction overview covers the full scope of the build. The mold making guides and resin casting guides on this site cover the foundational fabrication skills the build requires.
The community has produced complete, high-quality B9 replicas from builders at every skill level. What distinguishes successful builds from stalled projects is almost always community engagement — using the available knowledge rather than trying to solve independently what others have already documented.