Making Inventive Wooden Toys E-Book

Bob Gilsdorf

• Herausgeber: Fox Chapel Publishing
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 80

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

What does woodworking have to do with physics and fun? You're about to find out! Making Inventive Wooden Toys is filled with high-octane, exciting, and slightly wacky toys for kids and parents to build together. These creative projects combine ingenuity and woodworking with real-life lessons in science, technology, engineering, art, and math—aka STEAM. Have fun building 33 easy-to-make wooden action toys that can do extraordinary things, like the Desk Top Rocket, the Anti-Gravity Box, the Ping Pong Ball Explosion, the Gator Snap, or the Horizontal Wheel-Top Racer. You'll find there's a secret treasure buried deep within each project… as they bring science to life and actually demonstrate the laws of physics right before your eyes!

Leseprobe

DON’T SHOOT PEOPLE OR ANIMALS.

There are many toys in this book that launch objects through the air or shoot objects across the ground. Be extremely careful not to aim at any people or animals. If your want to aim at something, line up some action figures or empty cans.

© 2018 by Bob Gilsdorf and Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc., 903 Square Street, Mount Joy, PA 17552.

Making Inventive Wooden Toys is an original work, first published in 2018 by Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc. The patterns contained herein are copyrighted by the author. Readers may make copies of these patterns for personal use. The patterns themselves, however, are not to be duplicated for resale or distribution under any circumstances. Any such copying is a violation of copyright law.

Print ISBN 978-1-56523-948-7eISBN 978-1-60765-546-6

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

To learn more about the other great books from Fox Chapel Publishing, or to find a retailer near you, call toll-free 800-457-9112 or visit us at www.FoxChapelPublishing.com.

We are always looking for talented authors. To submit an idea, please send a brief inquiry to [email protected].

For a printable PDF of the patterns used in this book, please contact Fox Chapel Publishing at [email protected], stating the 9781565239487 and Making Inventive Wooden Toys of the book in the subject line.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my awesome wife to thank her for all the support, patience, editing, painting, handmodeling, typing, and loving kindness she gave me to make this book possible. It is also dedicated to my five boys who still continue to inspire me with their ideas and adventures. A special shout-out to Noah for all his work on the exploded diagrams. Finally, this book is dedicated to the next round of kids that are just reaching the toy-maker age.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PROJECTS

Desktop Rockets

Desktop Rocket Launcher

Gumball Aquarium

Dime Launcher

Pocket Gumball Launcher

Ping Pong® Ball Explosion

Pay Dirt Gumball Maze

Pay Dirt Joystick

Tornado Box

Bird Poop Splatter-er

Horizontal Wheel-Top Racer

Knocker Shooter

Mouse Across the Floor

Top Launcher

Catapult Castle

Right-Back-Atcha

Cup & Ball (Without the String)

Treasure-Hunt Box

“Is It Worth It?” Gift Box

Fireball Shield

World’s Smallest Wooden Toy

Ice Cube Delay Freaker

Palm Reader

Lightning Sword

Gator Snap

Skeleton Fish

Fishing Pole

Secret Drawer Shelf

Water Catapult Room Protector

Antigravity Box

Water Balloon Sneak Attack

Pirate Ship Rock Target

Cog Slam

PREFACE

Have a look at the projects listed in the Contents? Ready to go full steam ahead? Well, there’s more! Yes, these are high-octane, exciting, slightly bizarre toys that you build yourself (with some grown-up help to use the power tools), but there is a secret treasure buried deep within each project. However, finding the riches that they hold requires actually making and playing with them. In this book we call it “playing” whereas scientists and engineers call it “experimenting.” You have to try out your toy, see what it does, tweak it a little, and observe what happens next. So what treasures will be revealed to the inventor, creator, and maker of each project? These toys each contain real-life lessons in science, technology, engineering, art, and math—aka STEAM.

Science comes to life in these toys, and you actually see the laws of physics right before your eyes. Storing energy sounds mighty complicated, but that’s exactly what a rubber band does when it is stretched to launch a catapult or when you wind up a spool of string. Can you store twice the energy with two rubber bands? There’s only one way to find out and it’s the fun way—just do it! Does stretching a rubber band further store more energy? That will be obvious when you try it. Stretch it too far and it breaks. Now you have an engineering problem to solve. Engineers basically exploit the laws of physics to make and do useful things.

WARNING: THIS IS NOT YOUR NORMAL PROJECT BOOK!

Inventing toys is a wild, bumpy ride with plenty of experiments and mistakes. For each project, I’m going to share some of the ideas I used to start construction. I’ll also show you some challenges (aka major failures!) I faced. But I won’t be giving you precise steps explaining exactly how to build each toy. Study the illustrations, learn from mistakes, and keep trying, as all great inventors do. The answer will eventually come, and when it does, yelling “Awesome!” sure feels good. Start creating your own amazing toys!

Build the Top Launcher and you’ll learn all about the “conservation of angular momentum” without even having to crack open a physics textbook. A spinning top doesn’t sound very high tech until you learn that the exact same principles are used to position satellites in outer space. Of course, engineers like to change the name from “spinning top” to “gyroscope” to sound more impressive.

But let’s not get bogged down in all the educational stuff, let’s just have fun building, decorating, and discovering what fun we can have when we make something by ourselves. That alone is enough for the laws of physics to be stamped into your minds. Let the making begin!

DESKTOP ROCKETS

This project was inspired by my mild disappointment with retractable ballpoint pens. Yes, they are ingenious little contraptions with a clever latching mechanism and a spring-loaded button that prevents large ink spots from growing in your pocket. Where’s the disappointment? Well, have you ever pushed that button down on a desk and then released the pen? Of course you have, everyone has. The pen hops a disappointing inch or so. The kid in me wants the pen to soar at least several feet in the air to the altitude where my imagination can turn it into something spectacular and sound effects can be added. So that’s what I set out to accomplish—a desktop rocket that would gain some serious altitude and ignite a kid’s imagination.

MATERIALS

• ¾" x 1 ½" x 2 ½"(2cm x 4cm x 6cm) pine board (aka a chunk of 1"x2")

• ⅜" (1cm) dowel5 ½" (14cm) long

• ¼" (6mm) dowel1 ½" (4cm) long

• #64 3 ½" x ¼" (9cm x 6mm) rubber band

TOOLS

• Scissors

• Ruler

• Pencil

• Coping saw or scroll saw

• Awl

• Drill with bits: ⅛" (3mm), ¼" (6mm), ½" (13mm)

• 3" (8cm) of thin wire

SMART ROCKET:

Let your rocket help you make decisions. Write "Yes" on one side and "No" on the other. Ask your rocket a question and then launch it to get the answer.

REVERSE ENGINEERING

First, let’s take apart a pen to see what makes it jump. Aha! What we find is a very tiny spring on one side of the ink tube. No wonder it doesn’t hop very high.

MORE SPRING

If we want the rocket to go higher we’ll need to design something with a larger spring.

SIMPLER ROCKET FUEL

The perfect spring can be hard to find. So rather than compressing a spring to store energy, we can simplify our rocket by instead stretching a rubber band. This makes it very easy to experiment with a wide variety of rubber bands.

Use your measuring and marking tools to mark the dimensions and locations shown. The grain should run lengthwise down the rocket body. Use an awl to mark the locations of the holes. These small indentations will keep your bit from wandering. Cut the rocket body to the 1 ½" by 2 ½" size. Drilling holes in square boards is much easier than drilling holes in weirdly shaped boards. Drill the holes in the rocket body and fuel rod. Use a clamp and a drill press to drill the hole for the fuel rod.

Note: Patterns are not drawn to scale.

Insert the pins into the holes in the rocket body. Glue them in place with about ¼″ (6mm) protruding from the sides, making sure that neither pin is visible in the hole for the fuel rod.

Pull a rubber band through the hole in the fuel rod. I use a thin wire. Make sure there are equal lengths of rubber band on either side of the fuel rod.

Place the fuel rod into the hole in the rocket body. Make sure the end with the rubber band is at the narrow top of the body. Loop each side of the rubber band around a pin on either side.

TEST PILOT

WARNING: Safety always comes first. You don’t know how high your rocket will soar, so before launching the rocket be sure there is nothing above you, such as a fluorescent light, ceiling fan, satellite, or (more importantly) any part of you!

ROCKETS AWAY

Launch the rocket by pinching both sides of the body between your thumb and forefinger. Place the end of the fuel rod on the table and press down on the rocket body until the base of the body is flat on the table surface. Release your fingers and watch your rocket soar. For a higher launch try licking your fingers. After testing the rocket out, sand, shape, and decorate it in a variety of ways.

DESKTOP ROCKET LAUNCHER

“Roger, launch team.We are Go for launch.

T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, Ignition, 2, 1, and lift-off. We have lift-off!”

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