Grasshopper Pull Toy

Albert just posted his version - here's mine.
The last few years have seen me doing a lot of animated toy builds. This is the one that started the series back in 2018.

This is another one from Jim Makowicki's Making Heirloom Toys . I did modify the design a little bit by giving the upper part of the back legs some shape. The build is from some cherry harvested from a local forest. The Wheels are from a scrap of sycamore. The axle pins, eyes, and antennae balls are from craftparts.com.

As this was my first animated toy I had some trouble with getting the thing to move when I took it for a test pull. I had size the holes for the pins with a minimum clearance – just enough for a smooth action. It turns out that final assembly with parts not perfectly square.

The slight misalignments and minimal clearances meant the poor grasshopper just slid along the floor. Rather than destroy all the glue joints and rebuild it, I held a back wheel against the rubber drum of my drill press sander attachment and ran it for about 15 minutes. Eventually everything got nicely worn and sloppy. I found out in future builds from another book that a clearance of about 1/16” is typical. It works fine now.

This past year the little fella came back for repairs. A toddler had pulled the antennae off and a puppy had chewed the handle. To be fair to the toddler, I used electrical wire for the antennae stems and the glue did not hold very well. And the puppy was – well, a puppy. I replaced the wire with 1/8” dowels and put a new handle on and it’s good as new.