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Making Your Own Legos With Wooden Toy Wheels, Axels, and Blocks

Published Saturday, November 29, 2008 by bloggerblognet84084 | E-mail this post

Every child loves to put things together. They love getting the pieces to a project and assembling themselves. This was the concept of the Lego toys, waffle blocks, and model companies around the world. This desire to assemble things and take things apart can be easily met by creating wooden projects that fit together by interlocking fingers which are easy to put together and easy to take apart. By providing a few simple pieces, a toy wheel, axel, some block pieces, a child can make a car, a train, a wagon, or anything else their minds can come up with.

The idea in making these simple pieces would be to allow the child to be able to take the item apart and reassemble it at any given time. This means that the joints in the piece have to fit together solid enough to hold while be loose enough to come apart. This can be accomplished by designing the toy as a while and then cutting it out piece by piece, checking the fit on each piece before moving on. All rough edges should be sanded down and the corners should also be sanded down to provide a safe and comfortable toy. A non-toxic paint should be applied with a latex clear coating to provide some protection between the wooden pieces.

When making the toy wheel, special care is needed. The toy wheel should be able to go onto the dowel that would become an axel, but it should be able to freely spin. The hole for the toy wheel can have a fair amount of slop in it to allow the toy wheel to spin freely on the dowell. An idea to consider when making the toy wheel would be to make a solid "hubcap" that would attach to the end of the dowel but not to the toy wheel. This would allow the toy wheel to spin freely between the hubcap and the block that the dowel is set upon.

To make it easier for the child to attach the axel to the blocks, a shorter dowel should be used so that it does not have to go across the under body of the vehicle which is being made. By providing four or more axels, each individual toy wheel can be added separately and a small hole can be used in the design of the blocks to hold the axel.

The idea of making wooden pieces that fit together to create toys, is not new. People have been creating toys like these for generations. There have always been "Linking Logs" and wooden blocks that functioned as fun and safe toys for the children of the family. The idea of using pieces to create one or more vehicles or designs is not new either. What makes it unique though is the interaction that one has with the project and the details in which one puts onto the pieces. There will never be a set like what you can create for your child. That is what makes the pieces valuable and an heirloom for future generations. Who knows, your great-great grandchildren may play with the toy wheel that you made for your child.

Tricia Bratton is an aspiring artist and employee at craftparts outside of Fort Worth in Haltom City, Texas, offering many products including wooden toy wheels, wooden toy parts, buttons and plugs and a huge inventory of unfinished wood parts for woodworkers and crafters. For all of your Wooden toy parts needs, check out Craftparts

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