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A couple of little tinnies
It's metalwork, but not as we generally know it. But great fun!
My grandchildren aged 6 and 8 often ask to make something in my workshop that is more complex than they imagine (jetskis, remote control cranes etc). I have them here only long enough each time for very simple things, unfortuately.
This week they wanted to build a little metal boat....
I gave it a fair bit of thought and came up with a design for making little 'tinnies' out of 2 and a half dogfood tins.
I got them to examine our (full-size) tinnie and think about what each piece would have looked like before it was bent into shape. We then sketched those shapes with my help and cut them out of paper and glued them together with tape. It looked indeed like a boat :)
I suggested that for a smaller version we could use less pieces of metal and combine some of the shapes, showing them on paper how we could make 'tucks' by cutting out wedges and fold ome piece out of one. The result was still boat shaped but with less joints.
We then used the paper patterns to transfer the shapes to cut-apart dogfood cans with tops and bottoms cut off and walls rolled flat. They then cut the shapes out with lot of warnings from me that the edges and any jagged bits would be extremely sharp. I showed them how to fold and roll edges (roughly) to reduce the exposed sharp bits. We then folded and hand-shaped the two sides and trimmed them so they would line up with a little outward flange at the keel and gave a reasonably straight rolled over top edge.
Applied a few clamps to hold it all in shape. They were quite impressed.
Then I repeated a lesson I had from my grandfather when I was 8 and still remember well!
I got out an old copper soldering iron which we heated on the kitchen gas stove until the flame went green :) (much to Pam's delight - not).
A little Bakers flux along the joints and first showed them, then let them solder the joint themselves.
The result were a very sturdy tin toy boat. I told them and showed them on our tinnie that metal boats should have flotation built in. So we folded two seats and put blocks of styrofoam under them and then soldered them in too. Last was a bit of tinned wire soldered on for an anchor 'rope' at the front. A good scrub removed the flux.
Leak test, flotation test and flotation after submersion tests all worked out first shot.
They loved it!
So yesterday they aked if we could make another one so they had one each. Three more dogfood cans were washed out and in about 2 hrs we had another one - almost entirely done by the kids.
Sorry I didn't take photos of the construction, but here is a shot of the second happy home-made 'tinnie' owner.
Nobody suffered any cuts or burns - not even me.... :)
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