Wooden Toys - Multi Deck Boat With Lights

Kids have a natural attraction to lights and to things that "close/open". I wanted them to have some kind of toy, where they could find both, so I thought of making them a boat, then fitting it with lights and switches for them to play with.

The easiest boat I chose to build for them was based on the Ro-Ro type. Here are pictures of the steps to make it:

Step 1- Cutting the sides and bottom of boat

Step 2- Preparing the groove for the deck

Groove is ready

Deck is fitting perfectly

Next is to drill the portholes

I used a 10mm diameter drill the portholes

Stoppers for the rear door

Doors, one for the front and one for the back

Hinges for the back door 

Hinges - Using reinforced Plastic. I ended by switching to metallic ones later on

Grooves for the hinges.

Hinges would be then riveted and glued

Back door is ready

Stapling the bottom part of the hull

Leaving the glue to dry after the stapling work

Keeping all in right angles for the next steps

Sides of the 1st deck - Same porthole sizes

All marked and getting ready for the stapling and gluing

A bit of decoration for the sides using wood burner

Sides are now ready

Moving front door. Metallic hinges could be seen and magnetic stopper to keep it in place

Front door ready and holding tight.

Preparing the living quarters

Two compartments should be more than enough

Adding Carpets. Underneath this deck are lights. I have put a switch at the back as seen here

The Bridge. Carpets have been fitted. Battery to operate the lights underneath

Bridge is ready

Top cover - This is what took most time, due to the  rotating search light fitting

Exploded view of the multideck boat

Cosy and comfy

Boat Garage.

The boys getting ready to let their passengers get on board

Front door opens, the boat has a large garage bay

Blue lights for the bridge

Back lights all functionning

Front view

Rear view

Close view of the deck

Time to get the boat inspected

Boat certified all dox are ready

Powerful search light, can rotate and kids really love it.

Boat- general view at night. All lights on

General view of the boat during day light. Next would be painting and adding some additional items

 Kids seem happy with it for the moment, stuffing many of their cars in the garage, opening and close the doors, and switching on and off all the lights.

Wooden toys: Aircraft

It is a known fact that children love to play more with wooden than plastic ones. I made for my kids a wooden toy in the shape of a plane, that had a winch on top of it, so that they could hook stuff and have some good time. I noticed that they tend to like hooking stuff, they trashed a previous crane they had, and kept just the hook part of it and played with it for weeks. This lead me to the idea of making a hook and winch with their aircraft.
Anyway, the following are just sharing some ideas on how you could also make similar toys for your kids to keep them busy for a while. With my two boys giving hard tests to every single toy they have, and knowing their aptitude to give each toy a Go-No Go test, I decided to make their plane heavy duty to resist rough tests and to survive for at least a week (the previous prototype made of plastic survived only a day!).
It has now been over 3 months and the plane is still surviving, so I guess my clients are happy...

Steps for building the wooden plane:
I wanted the plane to be made of recycled parts, so many components were just used to act as raw materials for new uses. I left the plane unpainted to avoid any issue of toxicity etc., after all, nothing is better than natural wood.

Early construction phase, securing the wings and engine supports

Crane, fully rotational with guide for the cable, the knob will lift the  hooked load. The whole mechanism is much more complex than it looks and it took more than a couple of hours to have all the parts drilled and put in place.

Close details of the heavy duty winch, with buffers to keep the cable in the drum, about 1m of cable is available.

Engine support: I added straps for extra help

It starts to take shape

This work space keeps getting improved every week!

Staple gun used to reinforce the straps and keep them in place

Belly of the fuselage, shampoo bottles used as engines

L-Shapes supports for the back tires.

Front tires, taken from a curtain system. Tires can fully rotate

Securing the hook, I used superglue to make sure it won't come off

Securing the "engines" onto the wing, glue + plastic straps

Rudder & back engines made of used batteries. Some details of the winch is shown too.

Plane is ready for test flight

Let me see if I can make it fly !

Plane in action, lifting heavy goods here and there

Cradle for lifting goods, kids like it as they can carry some cars inside it, they like to make it free fall due to weight then winch it up

The cradle is made out of an empty USB box, I used fish thread for the slings

Plane - Right side. The idea of shampoo bottles is to fill them with water for extra fun (fuel level / fire extinguisher)

Plane - Left side

Plane, over 3 months old and still surviving.

Plane performance:

I have seen the plane dragging about a large 12KG toy basket across the floor and across the living room carpet, so that winch, cable & crane did a perfect job resisting the test. I guess that was the heaviest item the kids managed to find, they got scolded hard after that, as that was really pushing the plane to extreme limits!..