Design for Kid's Toys

I found a wonderful thing yesterday.  In my file of wood plans outside I spotted "Digger" Pattern on an envelope.  Lo and behold it's the hand drawn plans from the sandbox diggers my dad made for us as kids.  My god we had a hell of a lot of fun with those.  I had completely forgotten that my mom dropped them off for me and thank god I put them in the wood pattern file or I would never have seen them again until the next decennial file cabinet cleanout I do.  I feel like walking through the process of making my son a digger.

Step 1: Model the plans in 3d and make drawings for printing.

Here is a photo of the plans as they stand.  The only dimensions are the thickness of the material.  Yikes.  That's awkward but I got out my handy measuring stick, found an assistant, and off we go.  Turns out, it's pretty simple stuff with most dimensions easy fractions.  Of course, it's in imperial inches.  1970 was long before metric took hold here in Canada.






The modelling was quite straightforward except for a few tricky tangent curves and some blending issues.  Here is the finished 3d model.  I have decided I'll build one exactly as originally designed for the sake of history and then I'll fine tune the design for easier fit, assembly, and material efficiency.  I may also tune it for aesthetics.  I think the digger would look a bit better with the bevels on the legs matching up to the base without a shoulder and other details.  Missing from the model is the string which runs from the bucket to the handle to allow dumping.  Strings are awkward to model in 3d and look realistic.

The next step is to complete drawings for cutting.  I have organized printing them at 1:1 scale to make layout simple.  I'll get them printed on D size (24"x36") bond paper and cut out the patterns.