Making a Toy WW1 Tank (Part 2)

British Tank	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4
German A7V	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4

I edited the tank image down to just the side view using MS Office Picture Manager but obviously, you can use any image manipulation software or the photocopier of your choice. I then resized it using PowerPoint because it gives a very easy inches scale to follow. (I used the profile I found on http://www.the-blueprints.com/ but I'm not showing it as part of the template I'll include in Part 3. As cheap as I am, I not willing to take other people's work and pass it off as my own.)


I decided to use some IKEA bed slats that I had been given by a friend. (These are not to be confused with the IKEA bed slats my in-laws gave me...) The slats are 3/4" thick and 2 5/8" wide. I cut two pieces about 9" long and then "sandwiched" both pieces together using double sided tape. I sprayed one side with spray adhesive, let it sit for about five minutes and then applied the image. (By letting it set up for a few minutes, it makes it easier to remove the paper later.) Then... off to the bandsaw and the belt sander!

	If you can't get the cuts to be a smooth as you like either because of inexperience or having not the right blade; don't despair. Try and make "relief" cuts perpendicular to your main cuts. You can always smooth things later (especially if you have a wicked cool belt sander.)
	These are the finished tracks. I drilled two 5/16" holes along the bottom that will hold the axles for the wheels. The holes are 2" apart on center and 5/16" on center from the bottom. (Did I mention how wicked cool belt sanders are?)

I cut the hull out of one piece of 2x3 (which we all know is really 1 1/2" x 2 1/2" grrrrrr). I had a general idea of what I wanted the shape to be, so I just drew it directly on the wood. Again, I'm not trying to make a scale model. I'm trying to make a recognizable toy. The picture above shows the axle holes already drilled, but actually I test fitted my hull against one side of the track to be sure my axle holes were in the right place before I drilled those holes.

Looking at historic photographs and line drawings gave me the general layout I was looking for.	After cutting out the general shape, I test fitted it and cut the wheel wells.

I drilled a 3/16" hole right in the center of the front cabin of the hull (facing forward) about 1/4 deep. This will hold a dowel that will be the hull machine gun. You could make the dowel 1/8" but it might be a little fragile for how it is going to be played with. Besides, I've seen some pictures and documentation that said this machine gun was sometimes a "Lewis Gun" which had an oversized cooling sleeve around the barrel.(Hey, I thought you said you said you weren't trying to make a scale model and that you were just trying to make a toy... - QUITE VOICES! I have to use my History degree every once in awhile!!!)


Okay. Let's test fit it and see how we are doing. I took some 1/4" dowels and slipped 1 1/4" in wheels on them. These will go inside the tank body so that they can't be seen from the outside. (By the way, some of the wheels marked as 1 1/4" at craft stores are simply not that size at all. A reliable source for the correct size wheels is http://www.craftparts.com) 

Grab the double face tape and then line everything up, give it squeeze and see if it rolls.

The space is going to be tight for the "clacker' I want to place between the wheels, but we can still give it a try.	It rolls well and is starting to take on the classic tank look I'm shooting for.

So far, so good.

On to Part 3 - Making the Clacker

British Tank	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4
German A7V	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4

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Making a Toy WW1 Tank (Part 1)

British Tank	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4
German A7V	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4

The origins of toys I make generally fall in three categories:

• Builds from online plans or more likely books I've collected.
• Trying to mimic a folk toy I've come across.
• Just making them up as I go. (The ever popular "proof of concept")

I've made several toy tanks over the last couple of years. I think the best one I made was a WW2 M3 (also known as a Lee tank) that I made for the son of a friend of mine. It clearly fell into the third category. (It was built before I figured out the digital camera, so that is why the picture looks like it was taken in a Tunisian sandstorm.)


Well, my friend is coming back to the US this summer after being stationed in South Korea, so what better way to say welcome home to him and his son than with another tank?


So, let the "let's just start making this up as we go" process commence. We already have the idea - a tank. But what kind? I know that I'm not making a scale model. What I'm trying to do is make a toy that has the look of a tank and is fun to play with.


About a year ago I stumbled across the Homer McNeil Wooden Toy Collection at the Ames Historical Society's site. I was blown away because during the 1940s Mr. McNeil made toys for his children out of food crates and office equipment (which sounded strangely familiar.) It really struck a chord with me that his kids held on to the toys for all these years. They were obviously made with love and meant a lot to his kids. If you get a chance, click on the link above and give it a look. It is well worth it.

One of the toys is this "WW2 Tank." Now, it really isn't a model of a particular tank, but you can tell just by looking at it that a) it is indeed a tank and b) that it is meant to be played with. It is a toy. Those are some of the qualities that I want to try and get.

The trapezoid lozenge look to the tracks is really reminiscent of a British WW1 tank. It is a really distinctive feature of those tanks. Another interesting thing about those tanks is that they didn't have a turret on top of the tank, but rather had their main armament in "sponsons" mounted on the sides of the tanks. Besides actually being a naval term, I think that this gives them a "land battleship" appearance. It also led to "male" and "female" models of the tanks. The males had six pounder cannons in the sponsons and the females mounted machine guns in those positions. (And yes, they built some with male AND female sponsons on either sides of the same tank, but I'm gonna take the high ground here and for once in my life not make a smart-alecky comment about it.)


Okay. So I'm decided on a WW1 British tank. I'll make it a male tank so it will have guns that can be aimed on both sides. I think it will have a good retro look. I'm also thinking about having some sort of clacker attached to the underneath of the tank to make a clacking noise as it is pushed across the floor. (Because as we all know, "The tracks on the tank go 'clack, clack, clack', ...'clack, clack, clack')


So, like I said, I'm not trying to make a scale model, but I do want it to be recognizable. So I need the general proportions and I need to decide on the scale I am going to build. I recently came across a site that I highly recommend  - http://www.the-blueprints.com/. The Blueprints site contains THOUSANDS of line drawings like the one below. This drawing gives me a pattern that I can use to cut out the logenze shaped tracks and gives me the proportions I need.

 

On to Part 2 - The Construction

The images can easily be resized to the scale I want.

British Tank	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4
German A7V	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4

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Making a Toy Cannon (Part 2)

Part 1

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Part 2

I've only ever had a few life changing purchases in my life (eg my first car, my wife's engagement ring, that jar of boysenberry jam a few weeks ago...) but my drill press is definitely one of them. The question isn't "What can you do with a drill press?" The question is "What can't you do will a drill press?" (So far, flossing and baking a cake are the only things I've failed at with it.) It has opened up all sorts of toy opportunities for me.
First rule of the drill press - don't be an idiot. Keep that in mind and no one will get hurt. Keep your hands away from the spinning and cutting parts and CLAMP EVERYTHING you are drilling. The bits can create a tremendous amount of torque; don't kid yourself into thinking you can hold something in place while you are drilling it. If you can't clamp it directly, take a minute and make a jig. It is well worth the effort.

Since our cannon has a solid body, we have to bore out the barrel to make it:

1. Look cooler and
2. Actually be able to shoot stuff!

Since the barrel has such an odd diameter, we can't just use a spade bit to drill a hole to place it and then lock it in place with a dowel. Instead I lined up two pieces of scrap and drilled a 3/16" hole through both of them. When the boards are upright, the barrel can be locked in place by a dowel straight through one board, through the side of barrel (the trunnion holes) and out the other board. This will keep it locked in place while you drill away.




Here are the measurements that determined what size holes I drilled.

• The total length of the barrel is 3 7/8"
• The barrel at its most narrow point is 1/2" in diameter so I went with a 3/8" bit for the bore.
• The depth of the 3/8" bore hole is 2 1/4"
• The plunger hole is 5/32"

With the jig firmly clamped to the work surface and the two pieces of the jig clamped to each other around the barrel we are ready to drill.


I drilled the bore first and then I just unclamped the jig and spun the barrel 180 degrees around the trunnion dowel and made sure I was lined up for the plunger hole before I clamped everything again. I replaced the 3/16" dowel as well since the bore passed through it. Hold on to the dowel pieces though, we have use for them in a few paragraphs.


The hole through the breech end of the barrel needs to be big enough that a 1/8" dowel will pass smoothly though it, but not so large that the spring that will live inside the bore could slip into it at all. I drilled a 5/32" hole through the breech until it was all the way through to the bore.

The last bit of drilling is to make a 1/8" hole in the center of a 1/4" dowel. This will be the plug on your plunger and it will live inside the bore. Again, a simple jig is in order. Just drill a 1/4 hole in a board and put a piece of dowel in it. Line it up, clamp it and drill a small hole.

Use epoxy or your favorite polyurethane glue to attach a piece of 1/8" dowel into the hole you drilled in the dowel plug. Make sure you have a good fit. I even lightly scored the 1/8" dowel to give a little more surface area for the glue to adhere to. Let it dry for the full curing time. You want this to be as solid as possible. After it dries, smooth and round off the top of the plug and test fit your pen spring. You might want to flair out the breech end of the spring to be sure it will stay clear of getting in the hole intended for the plunger.

Use a round file (which my dad always called a rat-tail file) to smooth out and slightly enlarge the bore. Take those scrap pieces of 3/16" and glue them into the holes of the side of the cannon. It's fine if they are too big right now because you can trim them to length later. After they have dried though, you'll want to use the file to be sure no glue or pieces of these dowels intrude into the barrel. For the cannon to work its best, you need a smooth bore.




Okay, you are in the home stretch now. With the spring in place, slide the plunger down the bore and out the breech hole. Pull the dowel back and forth a few times to be sure the plunger operates smoothly and the spring is not catching on anything it shouldn't. File and sand as needed. When you are happy with everything, place the bead you are using for the (ooooh, more cannon vocabulary!) cascabel (also known as the round thingie at the end of the cannon) on to the dowel. Pull the dowel back just to when you start to feel that the spring is engaged, and then mark the dowel where the back end of the bead is leaving about a 1/8 - 3/16" gap between the front of the bead and the back of the cannon. Cut the dowel where you marked it and then epoxy or polyurethane glue the bead to the dowel. Let it set up completely before you test it out and make sure that while it dries, it isn't gluing itself to back of your cannon.

Here is the cannon "at rest." The dowel goes completely through the bead. (Note the gap between the bead and breech)	Here is the plunger pulled back to its maximum. It doesn't take much to fling a little ball.

Time to take it out to the test range. I used 1/4" beads and small piece of 1/4 dowel shaped to look like an artillery shell. The range on this test make it seem like this really zings the projectiles, and it sort of does, but that target was really close. When I tested these for distance both types flew a little over 9' 6".



Since everything worked I finished up the kit pretty much as advertised except that I added spoked wheels that I made and put some clementine box wood over the trunnions to allow the barrel to pivot but still stay attached to the carriage. I painted the cannon, carriage and wheels with acrylic craft paint and finished it with polyurethane.

Although I used a $1 kit for this, any piece of dowel more that 1/2" thick could be used following the same plans. The projectiles are really light, but also very small, so don't make this for really little kids. Make sure that whoever plays with it knows you could hurt someone's eye with it and never to point it at anyone. I think that the scale is a little big for 1/32nd soldiers, but not so huge that it looks out of place and couldn't be used.

The finished cannon in all its glory.	Remember - Treat every cannon as if it was loaded.

Making a Toy Cannon
Part 1	|	Part 2

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Making a Toy Cannon (Part 1)

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Part 2

The toy soldiers of my youth were mostly the 1/72 scale tiny Airfix figures, but my family and friends also had a fair amount of 1/32 scale "Cowboys and Indians", some Vikings and the ever popular "Little Green Army Men." One Christmas I got a playset that had a cannon that used a pull back plunger to launch little shells across the rec room floor. Cool stuff. Even after the wheels broke, I continued to play with that cannon.

A few years ago I made this "pirate cannon" as a proof of concept toy. ("Proof of concept" is my way of say that I was just messing around with an idea so please don't look too closely at the quality.)

It has a 1/2" bore down the center of a 7/8" inch dowel. I have to tell you, I made this pre-drill press. It really helps if you have a drill guide... and a lot of extra dowels.


It can shoot a 3/8 wooden ball most of the way across our living room and continues to serve us well.

A few months ago I saw this kit for a dollar(!) at a local craft store. ZOINKS! A cheap wooden cannon for a buck. (Please take a moment to reflect on what a great country we live in... and the vast amount of wood and inexpensive labor available in China.) I snatched a couple up and got to work on turning them into something a little more realistic looking while still being a toy.

The kits come with "everything you need" (glue, pant, sandpaper, paint brush.) I put all those in the "I'll find a use for them someday" bin. The wood parts are good enough. I mean, what do you expect for a dollar? (Besides a new suit.) The carriage I pretty much used "as is" but the other two components were where some changes needed to be made. The wheels just don't cut it. Besides the axle holes not really being centered; they make the kit look a bit like something out of the Flintstones. Anyway, I'd already come up spoked wheels for just such a project.

The barrel isn't huge but it has a decent shape. At the mid-point is a 3/16" hole that holds a dowel to provide a pivot point for elevating the barrel (in case you are ever on Jeopardy, the technical term is the "trunnion" ) The barrel is just big enough that I can make a spring powered plunger that will allow it to actually shoot 1/4 balls and dowels pieces. The muzzle has a shallow hole and so does the breech. All I have to do is bore them to the correct diameter and depth.


The barrel that came with the kit is 3 7/8" long. It is tapered through the length of the barrel and is 1/2" at its narrowest and 13/16" at its widest. (I know, 13/16" ????? But hey, just keep telling yourself... I only paid a buck....)

Before we get drilling, let me show you what we are trying to do:

Next time - Drill press adventures.

Making a Toy Cannon
Part 1	|	Part 2

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Making a Toy Top (Version 1)

Tops are a seriously old toy. In Iraq, some tops from 3,500 BC have even been found. (Making them almost as old as my 7th grade teacher was.)


I have always thought tops were neat because of the tremendous speed they operate at from a simple pull or twist. As a kid I had a couple of commercial top toys, but never a wooden one. The two that stand out most are the immortal Battling Tops and a top/gyroscope called a Whizzer.

Epic Battling Tops gladitorial games still take place at my house.	My Whizzer eventually spun so fast it vanished into another dimension. (And yes, it really did a zillion tricks.)

In the past I'd made little tops out of... you'll never guess what...clementine box wood! Just a 1/4"dowel and a disk of the 1/8" plywood from a box, powered with just a quick twist of the fingers. They are fun to decorate and work well enough, but I wanted to make something more substantial.  That is where Bob comes in.


In looking for something else I found the general idea for this top at Bob LaFara's site - http://bobscrafts.com/bobstuff/top.htm
This design gets around my main top making obstacle namely: I don't own a full sized lathe.


Seeing as how I was recently named to Forbe's Magazine "Top 500 Cheapest Toy Making Dads in the World", I used a piece of 2x4, an old bed slat and a wine crate for the pieces I cut.
(I know I should use hard wood... but that would cost money! Like $4 or even maybe $5! Why, a new Studebaker should only costs eight bucks. Maybe nine with a full tank of gas.)


I used a 2 1/8" hole saw to cut out a disk from the wine crate wood (it is 5/16" thick.) I then used a 1/4" bit to drill a pilot hole straight through a 2x4 (which we all know is really 1 1/2" thick.)
This pilot hole let me start the cut on one side with the 2 1/8" saw and then after going a little more than half way through the board, I flipped it over and finished the cut.

Be sure the board is securely clamped and keep you hand out of the way.	Flip the board half way through and finish the cut from the other side.

Be sure to clamp everything securely and be careful not to touch the bit immediately after you finish. Trust me; it gets very hot, especially after the 2x4 cut.


I took a 1 1/4" hole saw and repeated the process twice on a 3/4" thick bed slat leaving me with two wood cylinders. Take one of these two and re-drill the center hole through it with a 5/16" bit. This will be the "handle" of the top.


 At this point I could have cut another thinner disk with the 1 1/4" saw to be final disk at the top, but I decided to use a store brought 1" toy wheel instead. I think it looks good and it has a slightly raised hub to help the handle spin. It also comes is slightly smaller than the handle, so that helps in holding and releasing it without touching the rest of the top.


Sand the disks smooth, get some glue and a 1/4" hardwood dowel and start final assembly.

The disks in order - 2x4, bed slat, wine crate, bed slat with larger center hole, toy wheel.	The dowel is actually straight. The shadow and the angle of the photo make it look this way.

Four of the five disk are then glued to the dowel. The handle is not. Make sure there is a little play between the handle and the pieces above and below it (for a total of about a1/8" gap.) You want this to be free spinning. The dowel can be trimmed to size after the top has been glued, clamped and is finished drying.

Glue the red sections to the dowel running down the center. Do not glue the (green) handle.	The second (red) section is what you will wrap the string around. Hold the green, free moving section while you pull the string to start the top spinning.

The dowel should extend about a 1/4" past the bottom of the top and be flush with the top of the top. (Wow, that is an odd sentence.) Shape the end of the dowel into a point. I did this with coarse sandpaper pinched on the dowel while I spun it by hand.

Okay, now you are ready to literally give it a whirl. Wrap two or three feet of string around the second section from the bottom. Hold the handle piece and don't let your fingers touch any other part of the top. Get close to a hard floor. Give the string a quick pull and then let go of the handle. It should look something like this -



I found that the more I sharpend the tip, the better the spin was.


I will paint this guy at some point, but I think the plain wood looks pretty classy for the time being.

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