Wood Magazine's excavator

From the latest issue of Wood Magazine comes the excavator. These are for my two sons’ xmas presents. Made from walnut and mahogany and finished with Deft Danish Oil.

Obviously their names are Adam and Alex. I used some DIY decal sheets that you just run through the ink-jet printer, spray paint with clear acrylic and then apply like a normal decal. The decals didn’t stick too well to the wood so I ended up epoxying them down and then coating with a protective layer of epoxy as well.

Pros of the plans: Easy to do, good drawings, model works well.

Cons: safety is not taken into account. My sons are 1 and 3 and if they could take the acorn nuts off they wood, so I epoxied all the nuts onto the threaded rod to prevent that. Also I bought all my hardware at the LHS and a 3” bolt is not really long enough if using a lock nut but no big deal to swap out with a 3 1/2” bolt. Also using a standard 3/8” washer made the head of the bolt protrude below the wheels, so a quick trip to the grinder took care of that problem.

The wheels, axles and smokestack all came from Toys and Joys, I bought in bulk and got enough parts to do 3 excavators and it came out cheaper than the hardware kit sold by Wood Magazine.

-- Rich, WNY, www.nyrockingchairs.com