BoschLive - Archive

Great ideas for toys

The toys you have made with love and care are the highlight in every child's room. Building them together brings joy to the whole family. Make your children's dreams come true and start off by testing our best ideas for self-made toys.

Rocking dinosaur
Ride through the jungle on a rocking dinosaur from mum and dad's own workshop. And do it all inside your own home! Take the cordless piercing saw and grinder to encourage your children's imagination with a really personal present.

Toy cart
The fun even starts when you build this fantastic self-made cart and trailer. With the Bosch multigrinder and cordless drill, you can create especially broad tires, so kids have twice as much fun turning corners in their playroom. It is also unbeatable as a truck for Lego pieces or a large taxi for cuddly toys.

Baby swing
Very young children feel extremely comfortable in a baby swing. Even inexperienced DIY enthusiasts will enjoy making one. With practical power tools from Bosch, cutting the pieces to size is child's play. Feel free to develop your own decorative ideas for the swing. Your midgets will be very grateful.

Puppet theater
Creativity is contagious. Whether you let your children help you from the outset or surprise them with the finished theater, this toy will bring pleasure to the whole family. Our tip: Design the figures yourself too.

Ready, steady, go
To ensure you manage everything easily, there are boxes on the right hand side of the screen for every described toy with detailed instructions, material lists and construction diagrams. Simply download them and you are ready to start.

Tips and tricks

You don’t need much to build children's toys yourself. The most important thing is to use your imagination and enjoy the work. Here are a few tips that are guaranteed to make your own constructions successful:

Basic equipment:
You only need a few tools as basic equipment. For precise sawing, we recommend a piercing saw or handheld circular saw from Bosch. They make precise work child's play. The most important grinding tools are a belt grinder and an orbital sander. With the belt grinder from Bosch, you can grind large surfaces cleanly without any physical strain. The Bosch orbital sander ensures very smooth surfaces while polishing at the same time. For drilling, we recommend an electric cordless hammer drill-driver. With these handy tools from Bosch, you can work anywhere even without a power supply. All hammer drill-drivers from Bosch are equipped with a left-right turning action for use as a screwdriver. (See the overview of useful Bosch tools on the right.)

The right materials
Soft, untreated wood panels made of pine or spruce are suitable for children's toys. You can buy the material in any DIY store. Plywood panels are suitable for toys with large surfaces such as the puppet theater. With a Bosch cordless piercing saw, you can make particularly clean cuts, even with round and complicated forms.

Smooth surfaces
Take care to ensure that wooden surfaces of toys are smooth and undamaged. To create a perfect surface, fill in uneven areas with a spatula. Finally, the Bosch orbital sander will let you smoothen out all uneven patches with ease. You can round off edges carefully using the Bosch router.

Rigid connections
Children's toys must endure a great deal. The connections between wooden parts must therefore be very rigid. Pegs glued into drilled holes in the wood are good. You can create perfect peg holes with the Bosch cordless drill. To ensure that the peg holes all have the same depth, use a drill with a gauge. Make sure that the peg holes are 3-4 mm deeper than half the peg length, so that there is space for the glue.

Colors make the difference
Wooden toys are ideal for children's hands: They are simple to grip and feel smooth and warm. Children find them even better if they are painted in their favorite colors. You can either coat wood with wax, dye it with mordant or paint it. There are wood varnishes based on vegetable waxes and oils that soak deep into the wood and keep it flexible and healthy. Mordant is applied with a cloth, sponge or brush. The intensity of the colors depends on how much you dilute them with water or solvents. You can treat heavy duty surfaces with transparent or colored varnishes based on substances such as resin and oils, forming a protective coating on the wood. Be sure to use eco-friendly, non-toxic substances.

Enjoy your work!