How to Build Your Own Truck

A fun hobby for young children to take up that will help them express their creativity and imagination is building model trucks. This is a great way to spark a child's imagination and interest in how cars and trucks are put together and to perk their interest in a wide variety of mechanics. Putting together a model car is usually a pretty inexpensive hobby and can provide hours upon hours of entertainment and fun.

Things You'll Need

• Truck model kit
• Model glue
• Paint
• Exacto knife
• Sandpaper
• Clean workspace

Instructions

1. Pick out a truck model kit that you would like to build. You can find a wide variety of model kits to build at various department stores in the toy sections as well as hobby shops. Choose between a snap tight kit and one you will have to glue. If you are new to model building, it is best to choose a snap-tight kit and work your way up to glue kits.

2. Clean off a table or work space to build your model. Have a place that you can leave your model out for the glue to dry without causing any interruptions to other activities going on in the home. If a child is undertaking this type of project, he could use his desk or perhaps build the model in the garage to avoid mess.

3. Remove the plastic sprues which have all the parts attached to them and wash all the parts. Be sure to use warm water and soap to give them a good cleaning to remove any film or dirt from the parts.

4. Use a knife to carefully cut all the engine pieces off of the sprues. Paint your engine a color of your choice, although chrome-colored paint is typically what model builders use for the engine block.

5. Glue all the pieces of the engine together in their appropriate locations. The directions that come with your model should have some diagrams to help you make sure your model pieces are glued down in the right locations.

6. Cut away the truck chassis from the sprue and sand down any plastic edges that may be protruding from the chassis. Just rub a piece of sandpaper over the rough spots until they are all smooth.

7. Remove all the interior pieces from the sprue and paint them accordingly. You will need to sand and paint the seats, steering wheel, gear shift, and dashboard prior to gluing them down to the bottom part of the chassis. This will help you make sure the paint job looks great and helps to avoid the frustration of navigating a paint brush through the model truck window.

8. Paint the chassis the color you want your truck to be. After applying the paint and giving it adequate time to dry you may want to consider a coat of gloss to go on top to give it some shine.

9. Glue down all the interior parts to the bottom of the chassis. Do this according to the proper location as indicated on the diagram of your instructions.

10. Glue the engine block down to the bottom part of the chassis.

11. Place the top half of the chassis down on top of the bottom chassis and glue in place. You will have to press firmly to make sure the pieces dry properly and stay connected.

12. Put the axles in their places and glue them down. Glue the wheels to the axles after assembling them separately.

Resources

• Model Trucks