The kitchen side chairs had to take a back burner.

 

 

My granddaughter has her 1st birthday this month.  My present to her is Rita – the rocking Dinosaur.  The inspiration for this rocking animal was from a book authored by Jeff Miller, entitle “Children’s  Furniture Projects”.  I did take much latitude to designing and construction.

 

 

I scanned Jeff’s drawing into a JPG formatted file and then imported into Sketchup. Using Sketchup, I drew over the imported image, created a 3D model, and resized the model to suit my needs.

 

 

Flat patterns were then printed in 1:1 scale.  The paper patterns were glued to clear shelving paper using 3M spray adhesive onto ¼” MDF to develop 10 individual templates.

 

 

Using the templates the dinosaur body was cut-out from ½”, 3/8”, and ¼” Baltic birch plywood.  The main body has 5 pieces.  Total part count is 52 pieces.

 

 

 

The rocking runners were made from eleven, per side, 0.120’”hard maple pieces.  The maple was bent formed using a MDF form and UNIBOND 1 adhesive. 

 

 

I like to trim the runners using a tall fence on the table saw.

 

 

A safe way to doom the end of the ¾” dowel used for the handle, is to use a router table set-up.

 

 

Some assembly required.  The different subassemblies were glued and screwed together.  Shown here are the 3 different inner main body pieces.  Notice that the middle pieces are hollow.  Similar for the flank subassembly. 

 

Because the main construction material was plywood, I glued in hardwood dowels in each attachment point and trimmed to fit.

 

 

I introduce to you, RITA!

 

 

Happy, birthday girl

 

 

 

Very nice Danl..……..That's what its all about...….. the smile on the young ones face!!!!!

 

Looks like you invested in a few clamps for this project.

That smile made it all worthwhile!

 

When she gets a little older, you might have add some "stop blocks" under the rockers to keep it from tipping forwards/backwards. 

1 hour ago, lew said:

When she gets a little older, you might have add some "stop blocks" under the rockers to keep it from tipping forwards/backwards. 

I've seen rocker designs where the last 6" of the back is flat.  That seems to act as a brake.  I did that with a rocking horse, and it did do the trick.  Apparently not needed on the front?  Kids more reluctant to throw themselves forward, so don't get the excess motion I think.  

That is a wonderful gift.  Outstanding.  

Those smiles are what we work for.  Keep it going.  Good job on the dinosaur.  

Very nice Danl, and it looks like Rita has a friend already

 That's awesome Danl ! Great design work. 

Great work. A lot more to that one than it looks. And.... now with the templates and prototype made you can go into production. Maybe do dolphins, elephants, and rabbits next

Edited February 5, 20206 yr by Gerald

Awesome job, I’m wondering how many generations will get to be friends with Rita.