Noah's Ark: In The Beginning

The final toy in this batch was a wooden ark with a busted ramp. It has been a sturdy toy, mostly, but expecting glue to stand up under the combined assault of the tykes was an optimistic assumption on the part of the manufacturers. So, inevitably, the door parted company with the hinge along the glue line.

Obviously what is needed is a bit more strength in the joint which can be supplied by a couple of suitably placed woodscrews. On inspection drilling a pilot hole through the door should present no problem. The hinge however may or may not depending on how far through the steel pin runs through the hinge.

Either way pilot holes will need to be drilled and the screws countersunk. In order to do this a spot of shopping is in order I think.

Inspection kit

Bought this 3 piece inspection kit on impulse, mostly for the magnetic dish but I thought the posable mirror would come in handy. Plus the whole thing was only £6. It appears to be a bit cheap and nasty but it will do the job for occasional use, and how many features can a magnetic bowl have?

Franglais Farm

Broken toy number two. More Early Learning Centre, this time an English-French farm toy which died within two weeks of receipt but we didn’t get round to returning.

The thing wasn’t completely dead though, but stuck on same tune. Pressing its buttons lead to very brief halt and restart as did switching between English and French. Also the farm scene was stuck and wee man on tractor was static rather than merrily rotating round scene.

Obviously this was going to be more complex inside than toy #1. On opening up there were a variety of PCBs and a motor unit. Testing the switches, motor, lights and mechanics revealed no obvious problems. Reassembling it got the wee man rotating and tune working but I could not resurrect the interactive component. I guess that this probably means the chip/main PCB is duff. Admitting defeat I stripped it for parts (couple of switches, electrolytic capacitors, transistors, a light (or maybe IR) activated switch, the 6V DC motor and its gearbox, pair of PCB-mounted LEDs, and a ton of screws) and consigned the remains to the recycling bin.

So 1 for 2 on toy fixes, the next is pure carpentry so I’m hoping to pull back my success rate.

Anglepoise Lamp

The playroom tidy has brought forth a Model 90 Anglepoise lamp, and as the workbench is in a dark corner of the room a spot of illumination would seem to be in order. The only problem was that it had a broken elbow joint.


The small square hole on the lower limb is a socket for a plastic lug which had snapped off leading to the lamp disassembling itself every time it moved.

Remaking the part was out the question but, after taking a few measurements, I realised the square hole was just about the perfect size to accept an M4 bolt (I knew it was worth buying 100 of them!). With a bit of trimming a socket could be formed in the plastic to accept an M4 nut and that should stop the elbow joint from coming apart. But no M4 nuts were to be found in the toolbox so back to Screwfix again as a side trip while going to the cinema.

On return 10 mins with a scalpel provided a socket and once the screw had been cut down to size with a hacksaw and checked for any sharp edges the elbow was fixed.



It wasn’t perfect, note the gap between the black plastic elbow and the red metal arm, but it was functional again. If it really starts to bug me I think I will have to go back and trim some more plastic and insert a rectangular metal plate into the area where the nut is. With a hole drilled in the correct spot it should be possible to locate the joint more correctly. But as behoves my stated functional/utilitarian bent, ‘tis gud enuf.’

A quick check with a continuity tester to make sure nothing had come loose or whether the bolt was causing any problems which would lead to electrocution of any of the family members and JOB DONE.

Babushka

More toys to fix, this time a broken pivot hinge on a doll's house. The two year old got her paws on the door and off it came. The trouble was a snapped hinge, which had been made out of uber-thin wood dowels (0.05"). The top hinge had parted leaving a stub in the door and an empty socket in the door casing ( the bottom hinge is shown below).

The quick fix was to drill out the remaining dowel in the door and replace it with brass rod. The sockets were 0.08" so 1/16"rod would do, or 1.5mm. A foot of 1/16" was duly purchased and a 7mm length cut. The socket in the casing was deep enough for the rod to be pushed up into it and then held with a strip of card while the door was replaced. The card was removed and the rod dropped down into the socket in the top of the hinge stile forming the hinge and locking the door back into place.

JOB DONE

Batteries Galore!

One of the first things out of the pile and onto the bench, I mean desk, was yet another battery powered toy. It seems that every other toy needs to flash and beep, the consequence of which is that the house eats AA batteries by the handful. We had brought a recharger from Pkgreen that should have been able to deal with standard alkaline cells, but it didn't. However it does work with rechargeables even if the screen is partly broken now.

With this in mind I decided to cease feeding the house's habit and buy in a chunk of rechargeables in one go to provide a maintenance dose of AA power. A search on t'internet led me to the eBay website  of RechargeableBatteries.co.uk who had 40 2000mAh Sanyo Eneloop batteries on offer for £65. These are low self-discharge batteries which should be good for the low-use low-drain toys that are scattered around the house. As I'm always a bit wary buying off the web and the eBay shop has only been running since 17/12/10 a quick Whois gave the domain registrant as Supreme Imports who, according to their website, is the largest battery distributor in the world) so that's OK then.

Batteries arrived within 4 days of ordering. JOB DONE.

Did someone say Project?

We are supposed to be having a major clear out of the junkyard that is the kid’s playroom. As is to be expected this should generate small fix-it jobs on a large scale . It would if it was being done with any speed, that is, but the Major is far too busy to progress her first project of the New Year. Hence it can be carried out at my more reasoned and logical pace, which also happens to be quite a bit more leisurely…

Anyhoo the first quarter of the room (also the one which the least in it) yielded enough floor space to fit another small desk into the room. I managed to swing it past the Major on the grounds that the current ‘70s office surplus desk could be used as messy/craft area for the kids  (ie code for a small scale indoor workbench for me,  mwhah-ha-ha-hah!).

At the moment the world and his wife are ditching their computer desks when they get a laptop and they are frequently available on Freecycle. As I am of a functional/utilitarian bent I don’t care what it looks like just as long as it fits into the space  and does the job so that suits me. A day later we had a perfectly reasonable pine corner desk. Result.