Street Sweeper

The street sweeper was a quick turnaround project.  My oldest actually did the preliminary sketches and showed me.  He told me that this was my next project.  I have to admit, a 7 year old is not the easiest client to work with.  It had to have brushes and a siren on top.  I can also say that it was not the easiest build either.  There were some angles and holes close to the edge that I was not that excited about. 

It is built on the same platform as the city trucks.  The size is about the same.  I struggled with the front wheels.  The size was easy but how I was going to recess them in was a problem.  The wheels are only a ½” thick so if I recessed them to the chassis the wheels would not look right.  This is why I grooved the side panels so that the chassis, back and roof all fit into the grooves in the side panels.  This way I could recess the wheels ½” and not have the hole in the cab from the dado.  It also made the chassis, roof and back all the same rip width. The grill is something that I tried and I like how it turned out.  It is a two piece grill.  This allowed for the vein lines and a solid top.  I like how it turned out.  The back side is a bock with an angle cut in the back.  The challenge is the underside.

I will start with the vacuum piece.  This has a top and bottom groove through most of the width of the part.  This is where grain direction becomes important.  The grain direction should run the parallel to the length.  There is not much material on the edges.  This is one reason I make two of everything.  I just doubled the width of the part making more stable.  The holes to put the pegs in are close to the grooves.  The brushes were the challenge of the entire project.  They needed to be angled because they had to rotate; requirement of a 7 year old. So I came up this this idea.  I took a 12 inch piece and cut the angle in each end.  Then I marked the location of the hole to be drilled.  With the part clamped in the drill press, I drilled the holes.  This way I had the holes at the right angle.  Then I cut the parts to length.  After gluing the pieces in, I used them as a drill guide to finish drilling the holes through the chassis into the container.  That is how the brushed got their angle.  The instructions for this are not going to be easy.

I really enjoyed doing this project and it came out better than I thought it would.  I had some really concerns because my oldest has quite an imagination.  The overall dimensions of the street sweeper is 10 x 5 x 5 inches