One of my nieces has a bit of a thing for bulldozers so I thought I'd make her a nice wooden one. Once I was designing it I thought I may as well make three, one for my daughter and one for a friend's son. The tracks work very well. They are held together with rubber bands made from slices of bicycle tube.
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| Sketch Plans - some dimensions got changed during the build to fit the stock I had |
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| Prepared stock from recycled Rimu |
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| To make discs without a lathe I roughed them out on the bandsaw then turned them down on a center against the disc sander. |
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| To get the wheels to run smoothly on some standard size dowel I drilled them out slightly undersize then made a custom reamer out of a piece of steel tube to get the right fit. |
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| Reaming a wheel. |
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| Glueing the side plates onto the core of the wheel. Two at once here. |
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| Notching the track plates was very time consuming even using a simple jig on the band saw. |
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| Assembling the track plates into a rubber band chain to make a track. |
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| Brrooommmm. |
