Little Vehicle Series

I decided that I needed to expand the little vehicle series by three more.  This makes it an even ten vehicles.  The ambulance was a simple design, my son wanted a cement truck, and I wanted to do a forklift.  That is where the designs came from.

First, the easy one.  The ambulance is pretty straight forward and can be made into a box truck.  There really is not much too the design.

The forklift was much more challenging.  The biggest struggle was the proportions.  It was either too big, too long or just did not look right.  I wanted something were I did not have to use a scroll saw and could be cut out with a table saw and chop saw.  Overall, I am happy how it turned out.  I will say, having a hand plane really helped out on flattening the dowel and adding the profiles.

The impossible request was the cement truck.  I could not figure out how I was going to make it.  I do not have a lathe which means that I was going to use a dowel.  I was not sure how the bucket was going to be attached and then there was the size.  I first established my constraints, the chassis was 2 ½” wide and max 4.5” long.  The largest dowel I can buy was 2” at the big box store.  This is why I love to design in the 3d modeling world with good software.  I learned quickly that I could match angles with the barrel supports and using constraints, I could determine the angle and the distance that would result in measurements that were 1/8” or larger.  Then I had the structural concerns.  I doweled a lot of the pieces.  I did not worry about how I was going to make all the parts until that time came, and I procrastinated it.

Toughest part was the barrel.  I ended up setting my band saw at 45 degrees and putting in stop blocks.  It turned out easier than I expected and safer than a router which was my first thought.  I then needed to do the same setup with the belt sander.  This also took time to finish because I needed to tape off a lot of parts.  It came out well and my son is happy.

Little Vehicle Series

So I redid the idea of the build and grow and added a couple of more cars.  I tried to make them where kids can pound in the nails.  Honestly, that took way too much time.  Each unit had to be drilled together and packaged together.  I really did not trust myself to mix parts.  The precision was too much for the equipment I was using.  I turned and made a bunch how I would make them without nailing them together.  Here are some of the things that I wanted to do with this project.

First is the design.  This was all done without the need of a scroll saw.  This is unique for my toys.  The tools I used were a table saw, miter saw, band saw, drill press and belt sander.  I tried to limit the number or rip widths I used so that I could just rip a bunch of material.  This came in handy since I was making ten of each car. Everything but the cab is made from or can be cut from ¾ inch material and ¼ inch plywood.

The ease to make a lot at once.  I wanted to be able to make these in batches.  This was a reason for limiting the number of rip widths.  I also tried to standardize on the profiles so multiple parts can be made with the same groove or angle.  I tried to keep the drilling standard as much as I could but was not as successful.  This kept setups to a minimum and made it easy to batch out a lot of parts at a time.  I will admit drilling 140 holes in cabs did get a little boring (pun intended). 

Durability and Safety.  This is always important to me and the toys I make.  I want them to be played with and not be destroyed in a couple days.  My design limitations were the wheels needed to be at least 1 ¼ inches in diameter (choking hazard).  The toy needed to be big enough that little hands could still grab it and handle it.  It needed to be able to endure rough play.  There are a lot of glue surfaces for each part.  I am not a huge fan of plywood but it was the best material to use for the thin parts.  Plywood is a little more resistant to breaking when in thinner stock than wood.

Price.  I don’t usually talk about price because that has never been a focus.  This time is was.  I wanted the price to be $15 and still make some sort of profit.  I am not going to disclose how much each of the toys cost to make.  Just know that if I put in my labor I would be significantly higher than the $15 limit.  I did figure out the cost of each vehicle to the penny.  They also fall below the $15 mark.  The reason for the price cap is craft fairs.  The lower priced items sell faster than the higher priced ones.  Last year I had a lot of high priced items; this year I am changing it up.

Drawings. I draw everything out in a 3d CAD system.  These were done in Solid Works.  This was more of a learning experience for me.  I was able to design my own drawing template and learn more about Solid Works.  I am not sure how I am going to sell the drawings yet.  I am hoping to submit a couple to some magazines to see what happens.  I have the option to sell them as a complete set or individually.  I may try to mix up an offer on them.  Not sure how Etsy will handle an offer.  More learning on my end.

Bill of materials. With doing multiple sets I wanted to know how much I needed of everything.  This is where everything came together or fell apart and it did both.  I created an excel workbook with all the information in it about each of the projects.  Added a multiplier to figure out how much of everything I needed.  It calculated everything from linear feet of each rip width to purchased components.  It even spit out my cost.  I even figured out how to convert to fractions of a foot.  I know inches would have been better but I stopped at fractions.  It is setup so that a person can put in the number of each toy they would like to make and it will tell you the linear foot of each rip width, quantity of all the purchased parts, the length of dowel required.  It will also factor in the kerf cut and yield.  If you purchase any of these plans, email me and I will send you the excel sheet.  I will delete the plans that have not been purchased.  Sorry, if you have the dimensions of the parts you have the plan for these toys.

The build was pretty straight forward.  Did not have very many problems with the exception to my excel sheet.  I had a calculation error for the length of dowel needed.  I have fixed that and it works fine.  I have added a police cruise to the lineup.  This actually has the parts that I am looking for to make a semi-truck line.  This is probably going to happen next year though.

Jeep

After several months I finally finished the Jeep.  To be honest, I am a little disappointed in the design.  I will need to redesign if I am going to sell the plans.  The top portion was fragile and broke with putting in the dowel cross members.  The fenders were all right but were more challenging than I would like to admit.  The wheels seem too small for the size of the vehicle.  I would have to lose the back spare if I was to grow them.

I do like the overall body of the Jeep.  The design did look good on the computer.  I like the taper on the engine but it made the front fenders difficult to make.  I also thought the seats and the open back was a nice design detail that came out really well.

The project was fun even though I was not all that happy with it.  This is the fun part of prototyping a project, now I can redesign it better.

Build and Grow

So I tried a build and grow series.  It did not go down in flames but I realized really quickly that I was not going to mass produce them.  It is a pain to line up all the nail holes and predrill everything out.  I understand a little more what it takes to make the build and grow projects.  I would not be able to compete with the product already on the shelf.  I was not a total waste of time though.  Here are some of the key things that I did and learned.

I wanted to make three sets of each.  I created a parts list and listed out all the rips that needed by thickness and totaled how much I would need in each rip.  Sounds difficult but excel and pivot tables make it very easy.  Each piece was cut to the correct length before I even started putting the pieces together.  If my cuts were off then it would not go together.  It was interesting how little lumber it took to make fifteen of these cars.

      Planning and design was also a factor in making these.  I needed to make sure that kids would be able to put them together.  In the end kids are not putting them together because I don’t want to drill all the pilot holes.  I had to think about where the nails would go and could they be pounded in in the location they were in.  There were a couple of instances in the design where I had nails running into each other.

      I used experiences and job knowledge to make these cars more production friendly.  A little note about my work, I work for a cabinet manufacturer.  I did not want to mix my hobby with work which is one of the main reasons I make toys not cabinets.  The cabinets we build are good quality for the price and I would and have put them in my home.  However, I build to a higher quality in personal projects.  So I have tried to keep work and hobby separate as much as possible.  My goal was to produce a fair amount of them and it still is.  When looking at the break down of parts I noticed I had several rips that were an 1/8” apart and all were short lengths.  So I went back through my designs and reduced the amount of rips by a third.  This meant less table saw set ups and longer lineal strips to cut parts out of.

      The last thing that I learned is that I need to follow my plans as well as pay attention to test before drilling everything.  The first front end loader’s shovel is not flat to the ground because I did not put the holes in the correct location.  I thought they were the same as the bulldozer.  The biggest mistake was with the fire truck.  I marked and drill all the holes using the wrong drill bit.  I used 7/32” bit.  I could not fix them and had to remake all of them.  I had to remark and drill 36 holes.

The plan is still to make a lot of them.  I am going back to glue and dowels.  The nice thing is that my kids should be old enough to help me assemble them.  That is what I am looking forward to.

Cab Over and Two Trailers

I think this is the final set in the semi-truck line.  I have the standard cab, the sleeper and now the cab-over.  Then in trailers there is the belly loader, flat bed, the car carrier and now the box trailer and the tanker.  I know there are many more that I can make, but I am happy with this set.  The box trailer is pretty much straight forward.  The only tricky part is the doors and that is just to make sure they fit.  I did try in the original design to have a roll up door.  I could not get to a simple solution and there were some crazy solutions. 

The tanker is also another box, but the angles were not that easy to visualize and cut.  There are three cuts at each corner: one 45 and two 22.5.  I then sanded the edges to round them out a little.  I thought about keeping the edges crisp but then thought these are toys and they are going to be beat up. The two trailers were a quick fun build for me. 

The cab was something that I wanted to do but did not know how to make it look right.  With the two piece grill from the sweeper the cab finally looked right.  I wanted to have the cab flip up on the garbage truck but just could not make it happen.  So I just moved it to this project.  I like it in concept.  I don’t know if I like it in the toy.  My complaint is that when someone picks up the cab the chassis will rotate.  I knew it would happen and we still caught off guard a few times.  The trailers are 18 x 8 x 6 inches and the cab is 12 x 6 x 7 inches.  The total length of the trucks are over 25 inches.

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