Flutterby™! : Fire truck!

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Fire truck!

2005-12-26 02:31:08.830996+00 by Dan Lyke 1 comments

I mentioned that we were looking for a fire truck toy for Alan, Charlene's developmentally disabled brother. Charlene goes down tomorrow to deliver it, in parts, with tools for assembly. We think it'll be easy enough to put together that he can do it, and while it's rough (there's a bunch I'd change for the next revision, mostly revolving around better wood and more time spent finishing), we think it'll work just fine. I meant to have plans and drawings for building the toy, but enough got winged that it'd be kind of fruitless to put scans of my original sketches up here.

The ladder was built out of a piece of oak edging and bits of quarter inch dowel for the lower section, and cut with a saw bit on a rotary tool from a piece of quarter edge baseboard for the upper part.

Everything else goes together with 1/4-20 bolts, with two dowels on the light assembly that both serve as a holder for the ladder and alignment as the light assembly mounts to the top of the cab.


The wheel wells were cut free-hand with a router, then I dropped the bit and ran the edge of the bit shaft along the edge of the well to do an in-cut.


And here's the bottom of the base-plate showing the T-nuts and the axles, which were cut from a length of 1/4-20 rod and put in place with nylon locknuts.

Wheels are replacement 2" diameter 1" wide castor wheels.

The whole thing is meant to be assembled from this stage with a ratchet and a crescent wrench by someone who's somewhere between two and seven in assorted cognitive abilities. He'll need a little guidance, but we think everything will go together fairly well and give him not only a toy, but a sense of "I built it".

And if this works then we can start to push gift ideas off onto the other brother who's got some really nice fine cabinetry skills and the tools to apply them...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Dan's Life Fabrication Toys Handicaps & Disabilities Archival ]

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#Comment Re: made: 2005-12-26 16:01:29.278576+00 by: ebradway

This is truly amazing, Dan. Or rather, it's exactly what I'd expect of you. Not only do you write your own software when there isn't anything out there that meets your needs, but you make your own toy firetrucks too!

Once again, I bow to your amazing resourcefulness!