Been making some wooden blocks for my girl – absolutely refused to buy any!
Very easy to do, but still is surprising that it actually takes a little thought. I made some prototypes to get dimensions worked out, particularly the triangles. Decided all the edges needed breaking, so used a (very) small radius roundover bit.
Toy Blocks
Start of the pile of approximately 80 pieces. I still have some arches to make.
The squares are pretty easy, especially when using the Miter Express. The rectangles are double the size, and instead of trying to measure them, I used a trick I learned from using the Triton Router table, and the microadjusters.
Repositioning MagSquare Stop
Ok, not too clear what is happening here. The large MagSquare is locked to the table as the stop for producing accurate, repeatable cubes. I then wanted to move the large MagSquare twice as far away from the line of the blade. Instead of measuring it, I used one of the already cut cubes as a spacer, then a second MagSquare on the other side of it. This is locked to the table, then the block removed. The large MagSwitch is then moved up flush against the small MagSquare, and locked down, now double the distance from the blade. The small MagSquare is then superfluous.
Neat Piles of Wooden Blocks
Other than the arch pieces, this is the pile of blocks made.
Wooden Blocks Post Baby
They didn’t last long!
Filed under: Wooden Toys | Tagged: MagSquare, MagSwitch, Wooden Blocks |
Stu's Shed 
a chip off the old block – ho ho!
What size are your blocks? I’m making a set for a friend’s 1yo, and was planning on 70x70x70 cubes, but now that I’ve seen your long blocks & triangles I’m wondering if I should branch out a little more… 🙂
The cubes are 33mm square, the rectangles are 33x33x66, the triangles are 66mm on the shorter 2 sides. There are also larger rectangles which are 33x66x50
(My daughter is about 18 months old fwiw)
I tried larger blocks, but found that it wasn’t specifically necessary, and this size was good for small hands, but big enough to avoid um – eating problems!
Cheers!
Hmm…now you’ve got me thinking. I made a 70 prototype cube which seems light as hell to me, but maybe smaller would be better. And I might steal your roundover idea as a good excuse to buy more router bits. 😀
Finished my set of blocks on the weekend – thanks for the inspiration from this post, they turned out well and the target audience was happily banging them together when I left. 🙂
Pics on WWF:
http://www.woodworkforums.com.au/showthread.php?t=77900