My soon-to-be two-year-old grandson likes to use tools and build stuff. For Christmas I’m making him a tool kit.
Turned a screwdriver, cut and fit pieces for the tool box, and made a couple of clamps. I’ll make some nuts, bolts, and a wrench, drill some holes in the sides of the box, and make some pieces that he can bolt together.
The plan is to give him the box as a “kit” that he and I can assemble. I’ll make some tapered dowels that he can tap into tapered holes to “nail” it together for the glue-up. (The clamps will be used for the glue-up, too.)
I tried threading poplar dowels yesterday...didn’t work. So I spent most of the afternoon trying to make a dowel cutter that will make 1/2” dowels for the screws/bolts. Not so successful, either, but I’ll try some different techniques this weekend.
I’m using tapered dowels so that my grandson can nail the toolbox together. Violin peg hole readers and pegs are a 1:30 taper, so I went to my local violin shop to ask if I could measure up a reamer to see if it would work. When I told the shop owner what I was doing, he offered to let me borrow a reamer and peg shaper for the weekend.
The shaper didn’t get small enough for the 1/4” dowels I’m using, so I made my own. Below is a picture of tapering a dowel and reaming out the holes in the toolbox.
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