A site about automata, mechanical toys and retro toys
Part of the joy with old-fashioned toys is that often you can make them yourself . Making wooden toys is not a joke though - it requires decent woodworking skills and of course a proper workshop. What makes a good workshop for a toy maker? We'll see now. Unlike the typical modern carpenter who uses a lot of large power tools, the toy maker usually needs only fine hand-tools. One thing though is…
Feeling like Geppetto today? Excellent, making toys yourself is great way to practice your woodworking skills. There are probably hundreds of toys you can make out of wood but your time is of course limited. Slow down, you can't make everything. Look at our selection of wooden toy plans and patterns, pick a toy, and start with it. Good things don't need to be rushed. This resource list contains…
Along with cams and cranks, many mechanical toys use levers to transmit energy from one side of the toy to the other. There are three classes of levers . The most used and the most useful are the First Class levers. By moving the pivot they allow you to transmit power in different ways as shown below: Figure A Figure B Figure C The lever on Figure A transmits equal power on both sides. This means…
We all love robots. We even made a drawing app so you can draw your robots. Now, it's time to learn how to make them for real. Real robot toys made of good old tin! Here you go, look at these brave robots: 1. How to make pie tin robots Let's start with something easy. You may want to eat this one . It's made out of cheap pie tin and shouldn't take more than few minutes. Done? OK, let's go on: 2.…
Puppets and muppets, why we love them, and how to make a diy puppet. Puppets are the most "direct" kind of mechanical toys in the meaning that energy is directly transferred from your hands to parts of the toy. Marionettes do use strings or rods but still there are rarely any gears or cams like in the cam toys . So hardly any mechanical toy can beat the puppet by simplicity. And regardless of this…
Trick Or Magic? Disappearing animals, impossible figures, moving things that don't move - optical illusion toys can be all of it. And the good thing: a lot of the optical illusion toys are just papercraft so it's bloody easy to make them at home yourself. Typically they are mechanical and animated but don't require complex mechanisms like the crank toys for example. Let's just have a look at a…
If you liked the article about mechanical trains , you'll love the models below. Most of these toys are classes above the stuff that's sold today on the toy stores. Fortunately some of them can still be find. Have a look and learn more from the short stories under the photos. You can also click on each photo to get to the Flickr page and see larger sizes, comment on it etc. 1. DLR-like Old Wooden…
And It's Easy: You Can Make One Yourself While Hanging On a Horizontal Bar The string acrobat is a popular string toy . These toys don't fit a straight classification. They have one thing in common of course - a string is used to perform some action. In the end of this post there are some links to other string toys that I think are interesting, and you'll see how diverse these toys are. In terms…
I hope you like old computers. Because we here like them a lot :) Too bad I do not keep any of this stuff lying around. Fortunately other good people have taken snaps from theirs. So here are 19 really cool old PC pictures. Enjoy them now, and expect to see more retro computer stuff here soon: (You can click on any picture - this will take you to its Flickr page. There you can usually view it in…
They Are Simple, They Are Cheap, They Can Fly and They Can Creep Do springs and gears look a bit too much iron for you? Don't worry. Wind-up mechanics can be implemented even with wooden or plastic gears. But the spring! It should always be made of iron or steel. Or maybe it can be simplified. Rubber band powered toys are kind of... simplified wind-up toys where the rubber band does the work of…
Dissecting Mechanical Bodies For Fun and Knowledge They are used all over the place - in wind up toys , cam and crank toys , or even in mechanical clocks. They are used to store kinetic energy just like the batteries are used to store electrical power. Without the wind-up mechanisms we would not have any of these toys with keys, and perhaps this site would not exist. Which would be really sad.…
What Is RoCanvas A small and easy to embed javascript class for creating interactive drawing boards on your page. Add it to your site and let your visitors draw anything they want. With some server-side programming you can save their drawings to the server, create galleries, contests, let them draw their avatars, or create a cool lovely site like Draw a Pig . Current version: 1.4.0 Please note…
Who am I to blow against the wind? * Don't confuse them with wind-up toys . Yes, most of these toys are also purely mechanical . But they don't have real engines or any complex mechanism. These toys are powered only by the wind. Wind power typically causes some kind of spinning which makes the toy move. Except with kites. They are entirely different matter. %ADSENSE-468% Let's have a look at some…
A Superb Collection Of Retro Toy Plans: And Most of Them are Free! Here are they. A bunch of nice mechanical tin or wooden toys that you can make yourself. Gravity toys. Papercraft toys. Lovely toys. I have collected some of the greatest classics and made sure there are some kind of how-to-make instructions for each of them. Enjoy. And don't forget to mail me and show me a picture when you or your…
Come Back Again, We May Add To The List It's funny how many sites republish Amazon feeds or other automated content about toys, and how few places write and publish something really unique and interesting. Few but not zero, fortunately. We are not alone, there are some other lovely blogs and sites with a lot of high quality information and pictures about retro and mechanical toys and vintage…
Made Of Wood Or Tin, They Bring One Old Era At Home When was the last time you traveled by train? Did you take your kids with you? If you've missed to do it, take them next time. Traveling by train can't be compared to driving a car, it's a whole different experience. Children know this. Even if you are attached to your car, they know the truth: trains are better. Trains are magic vehicles that…
The Mechanical Toys Of Little Children It's a pity that toddles and young children can't play with most old fashioned mechanical toys. Small parts, chocking hazards, you know. You just can't give a cool wind-up bird to a 2 years old and expect everything to be fine. If by any chance the kid does not hurt itself, it will at least break the toy, or just not understand it at all - and this is the…
How It All Began And Where Are Mechanical Toys Today Archytas of Tarentum and His Flying Pigeon - 400 years BC One of the first mechanical toys ever created was the flying pigeon of Archytas of Tarentum . His toy was wooden and propelled on a wire by escaping steam. Accordingly to Aristotle the same guy invented also a rattle intended to amuse infants. He was one of the pioneers of automata and…
Or How To Make Toys That Look Better Than Those In The Store 1. Use Natural Materials There are tons of toys already made of cheap plastic and other preprocessed trash. Why would you want to make one more? You wouldn't of course. One of the best things about handmade toys is that they are made of natural materials - wood, fabric, stone, clay, silk, cotton... Not only that toys made of natural…
Don't Shoot The Duck, It Walks The Best It Can! The waddle duck is a very simple mechanical toy - it does not have even a cam mechanism. The waddling duck is powered by simple physics - gravity power and friction. The video below explains the physics in great details and also shows what kind of funny simple toy we are going to make: Tools and Materials Needed The best material for this toy is wood…