How do people make wooden baby rattles?

[Ives]

I don't mean the kind that you make on a lathe and magically the rings appear. I mean the kind where there's a plug, with some beans or lentils or bb's inside and they rattle around. It looks like there's some tool that can drill in and pull out a plug, and then you fill that space with rattly things and then put in part of the plug so there's still space left for it to rattle around? I can show a photo if you want to see what I mean!

 

[nev]

i think you are talking maracas Ives
but i think it will still be lathe oriented - a hollowed 'ball' with a hole into which a turned handle would fit (plug) after inserting your rattley stuff.

 

[duncanh]

Assuming you want your rattle round on the outside you'll still be needing a lathe. That's how i make mine (although I guess there may be other ways to do them).

Essentially made the same as a box but put in the rattly contents and then glue on the lid. Return to the lathe for final shaping.


Rattles by duncanhoyle, on Flickr

 

[Spindle]

Hi Ives

Show us a photo of what you mean - all I can think of at the moment would involve a hollow form turned on the lathe.

Regards Mick

 

[Ives]

Like this:

 

[Spindle]

Hi

I think they will just be deep holes bored into the wood and sealed with short dowels. If you want to match the dowels to the wood of the rattle I'd use a plug cutter - see link

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keyw ... wnl1nt7s_e

Regards Mick

 

[Ives]

Cool, so can you drill in as far as you want with these? Then you'd cut them so they don't fill up the space all the way?

 

[JakeS]

Cool, so can you drill in as far as you want with these? Then you'd cut them so they don't fill up the space all the way?

Nope - a plug cutter cuts a few millimetres out all around the plug in order to shape it, so you'd have a lot of gap if you tried to glue the plug back into the blank you cut it from.

What you'll need to do is bore the deep hole with a regular bit, then cut the plug out of another bit of the same species of timber with a similar grain.

There's no tool I can think of which would allow you to cut out a blind section of a bit of wood with a tight enough kerf that you could just glue the cut-out section back in again. The nearest I can think of is a scrollsaw with a fine blade, cut all the way through, and then just cut the ends off the bit you removed and glue them back. You'll still probably see the gaps, but they'd be much smaller than any other option. Much easier to just use a plug cutter and a separate bit of wood, though.

Alternately, you could bandsaw a piece in half lengthways, carve out a cavity with a router or something, then glue the bandsawn pieces together. With a good blade for a clean cut it's often possible to glue bandsawn pieces together with an almost-imperceptible glue line.

 

[Ives]

Anyone know what the 'compression' is referring to?

'...use glue and also a compression fitting and then sanded smooth... There is actually no glue that is on the outside of the rattle, what seeps out when we compression fit the plug is wiped off before we finish the rattle.'

 

[Dangermouse]

Plug is bigger than the hole, so has to be pressed in there by compressing the plug. Maybe ?

 

[Ives]

What would you compress it with, a vice? Put the plug in, then put the piece in a vice? But what's the 'compression fitting?'

 

[Dangermouse]

It's bad grammar, they are using, meant to say, a compression fit, I think.