The Dale C. Maley Family Web Site

I found that Lowe's sells about 4 different kits for children to assemble.  I bought all 4 to put together with my 4 year old grandson.  The first one we did was the airplane.

I also bought him his own real hammer and safety glasses.  We had a ball putting the airplane together.

The only problem we had building this plane, was that the little nails were really hard to drive into the wood.  I had to finish nailing them, they were so hard to pound.  I don't know what kind of wood this is, but it is very hard and dry.

I decided to made a hand-made version of this plane, but scale it up to 2X size, and make it so my grandson uses screws to put it together........instead of the very hard to pound nails.  He can also assemble and dis-assemble it multiple times..........which is how I have designed other toys.

I decided to make my plane using hard maple, from Menard's.  It is attractive with no finish........and it will take a pounding by young kids.

I selected the screw size below.  I will initially assemble with steel screws, then remove them and finish it with attractive brass screws.   If you try putting in brass screws first, you will strip them out on the screwdriver slot.  I usually take 2 or 3 times with the steel screw to go full depth, and use paraffin wax as a lubricant.

I printed out full-scale patterns from Sketchup, glued them to the maple blanks.......then sawed the out.........and washed off glue and paper with a wet shop rag.

I used a countersink drill, so the screw heads will be below the surface of the maple.

Since the wheels have 1/4" red oak dowel holes, I chucked up my threaded 1/4" steel bolt in the wood lathe, then bolted on each of the 3 wheels. I trued up the OD and rounded the 2 edges on the lathe using my carbide straight tool, and sandpaper.

I uploaded my Sketchup model to the warehouse.  You can download a copy here.

This was a fun project. I will let my grandson apply to U.S. flag decals to the back vertical wings on the plane............he really applying the decals.   I think he will be able to take it apart and put it back together many times.