History

History,

It all started out as a winterproject.

As a hobby I had (and still have, although on a much smaller scale) driving radio controlled off-road cars. I acquired the lathe and milling machine to produce spare parts for these . When moving to Norway it seemed like a waste to sell them, so they moved with us. After installing them again they just stood there, awaiting a new purpose.

One winter day I got an idea, as it turned out, this time one of my better ones.

What's the attraction with wooden toys?

I remembered having wooden toys when we grew up, these where always in use, there was always someone playing with those, when playing inside that is.

Strangely enough these appear to have the same attraction on our own children. One should think with all the cheap multifunctional toys nowadays that the simple and square design of an old truck had lost his attraction. It doesn’t steer, the wheels are almost round… ish, it doesn’t tipp, the back doesn’t open, what is the attraction with it then? If I put it like this it doesn’t sound all that appealing to me as well. But yet, it has something that pleases most people. 

The first one ever, photo with permission of the children.

After having acquired a huge amount of oak and birch, and having stored it at random places around the house, I felt the need to do something special with it. Especially the oak seemed like an incredible waste to just warm the house with, however important that may be. I started selecting the biggest chunks and made the first design sketches in SolidWorks. After some trial and error moments I ended up with the first working model. As soon as my children saw this however it ended up in their toy collection, and I was forced to produce several more. I managed to produce at least 5 more, which al where sold the moment they were ready. By now the design was done, and the drawings were made. I produced 10 more and on the fall marked in our shopping mall and the Christmas bazar on Borøya (an island close by) I managed to sell the lot. Pretty soon after this the first requests came for a trailer to match the tractor. 

As you can see from my ingeniously clever type designation, the trailer became series two. If you couldn't follow: the first digit points at the design (tractor is design one) the other ones are the sequence number. E.g. 135 means design one, production nr. 35. For now this works, what happens if I come up to design 11, or if I ever build over a hundred tractors i still need to work out. 

one of the first trailer designs, this was definitely not a winner.

The trailer designs number two were never a big hit, the chassis was to light, or to long,
Whenever the trailer tipped, the whole thing became detached and fell backwards.
It had however allready all the features that design number three has:
it can tipp and the tailgate hinges open.

Picture again with permission of the current owners. (my girls)

After a short time series two became series three. allthough the first ones were a bit short, this is the type of trailer as I build it today. The drawings in the plan 2 section show how to build this type of trailer.

The latest model, a kind of pick-up thingy.

Spring 2012 the next model was ready. It combines some of the steering mechanism of the tractor, and the tailgate design from the trailer. keeping in fashion with the other models, this one was very creatively named: series 4....

Drawings are ofcourse available again under the "truck drawings" tab.

Latest highlight was an interview with the local newspaper: the "tvedestrandsposten".

Every week one of the locals gets a chance to highlight his hobby or passion,

and now it obviously was my turn.