Rockin' Ride #1: The SketchUp Design

Refers to project posted here.

I’ve been designing this for almost eight months now. I planned to complete it before I got deployed in June but I got busy with other things and wasn’t able to really start on it before I left. This allowed me to spend a lot more time thinking about the design and refining it while I was in Iraq. I’m currently home for a short leave so I decided the design is locked in and I’m trying to crank this out in about four days.

My niece is going to be one at the end of January so I thought that a rocking horse would be a good project to make for her. I decided that it’s much better to make toys for new kids instead of things like cribs. That way you have a lot more time after they are born to work on it. I’ve found that kids can go for a while without toys but they need a crib pretty quickly after they get here.

I wasn’t really satisfied with making a traditional rocking horse so I wanted to make something different. I looked at rocking tractors, zoo animals, motorcycles, etc and decided those weren’t right. I also looked at gliding rocking horses but I didn’t like the look of all the hardware that was required. I really liked some of the push car designs I saw but I figured that cars are not really the thing for a little girl.

So I came up with the Rockin’ Ride. It’s a horse that you can push around and steer but it also comes with a rocking base to place it into. I figure this will allow the toy to be used for a longer time than just a rocking horse.

I’m headed back to the workshop to try to get this completed.

As always: comments, suggestions, improvements, and random jokes are appreciated.

-- Kyle Shipp, http://battleshipp.blogspot.com