Noah’s Ark Puzzle Toy

This project came from plans on toymakingplans.com. It was for a birthday present for my granddaughter. This first picture is from the plans.

The plans are very thorough with lots of images. I did make a few changes. The biggest one is that I added 5 more animal shapes since the plans had the same cutouts on both sides. I added the bear, cat, owl, rabbit, and hippo.

If you look at the image of the original design you can see I shortened the trim plank around the portholes, removed the plugs, and the cabin roof has a simplified attachment & closed peak.
Another change I made (after giving it away) was to bring the animals back and add handles. That was simply a 1/4" dowel that protruded 1/2". That made it a lot easier to fit the animals into the cutouts. Sorry - no pics of that upgrade.

One change I did not make and should have is to make it narrower. The overall width is 9 ½ inches. This makes it hard to fit on some shelves and takes up space in the toy box. It easily could have been 7 ½ inches – maybe even 6 ½ . At 9 ½ inches it barely fits on a shelf. There is a 2 in space on the deck on each side of the cabin. One inch would be plenty and ½ inch is possible. There is more than enough room in the hull for all the animals. I also should have shortened the height of the cabin by a half inch or so.

Still, it was an enjoyable build and fun gift to give.

PS: Madburg shared a comment about how this reminded him of his childhood version that had wheels and a string. If I made this again I would definitely add that feature. I think I would set the axles for the front wheels slightly off center so the ark has a bit of bounce as if going over waves.