Toy Turtle With Moving Head and Tail

This was another gift for a grandchild in 2019. As the turtle rolls along its head and tail extend from and retract into the shell. As with many of the toys I’ve posted, the plans come from the book “Animated Animal Toys in Wood” by David Wakefield.

 

The trickiest part of this build is getting the wheels and axles assembled. The head and tail are lifted by an off center portion of the axle. The idea is to have the center section of the axle off center while the wheel axles remain in line. Here’s how I did this.

 

Here’s a bottom view of the final assembly.

I do have a few photos from the build. Here, the holes are drilled for the offset axle.

The center axle gets glued in place while the offset axle is glued only on one side. This provides a little bit of fixturing to keep everything aligned.

Then the center section of the main axle is cut out.

A hole is drilled in the center of a dowel to make alignment bushings. These keep the head and tail centered. First a hole for the dowel is drilled into an alignment blank clamped to the table.

Then a dowel is put into this hole and a smaller bit is used to create a hole centered in the dowel.

The bushing are cut to length and glued to each side of the head and tail.

 

Gluing the shell to the body did take a bit of creative clamping.

This was another fun toy to make and watch being played with.