Marble Machine

I was poking around the Internet and came across a Modular Marble Machine designed by Matthias Wandel on Woodgears.ca.  Plans for the machine were reasonably priced and it looked like something that would be fun for my grandchildren.  I constructed it from soft Maple and Baltic Birch Plywood.  I would not recommend this as a beginner woodworking project because the pieces are small, very tight tolerances, and not easy to make safely.  I used a drill press, wood lathe, thickness planer, router table, table saw and a dovetail jig.  I made a special tool to form the wire crankshaft which operates the marble pump.  There was no hurry to finish the project so it took about a month to construct.

The grandkids played with it for a while then gave up because they took it apart and couldn’t make another marble run in their usual 5 minute attention span.  Anyone want to buy a nice modular marble machine?

UPDATE: Tony from the UK saw my tongue-in-cheek statement about obtaining my marble machine so, after some deliberation, off it went to jolly old England in March 2014. Tony has two daughters ages 8 and 4 who have an interest in engineering and he acquired the machine for them (so he says). Pictures, and a video to follow.