This Instructable is a supercharged mash-up of the childhood classic "magnetic personality" Wooly Willy toy and a coffee table.
First released in 1955, the Wooly Willy toy uses a "magic pen" (magnet in a stick) to move a small amount of iron filings around an illustration of a hairless floating head trapped behind a plastic window. You use the pen to draw hair, mustaches, beards, whiskers and eyebrows on Willy. It sounds simple, and truth be told, it is, but as anyone who's familiar with the toy will tell you, it's a surprising amount of fun.
Well, if you thought that the old Willy was good, hold on to your hat, because Wooly Willy just got a whole lot bigger and better! Complete with modern styling, coffee table functionality, cooperative drawing and a super sized drawing surface, this Wooly Willy coffee table is completely one of a kind and totally rad!
Best of all, it's made almost entirely from Ikea parts, so just about anyone with some very basic building know how can make one.
Wally Woo Woo!
First released in 1955, the Wooly Willy toy uses a "magic pen" (magnet in a stick) to move a small amount of iron filings around an illustration of a hairless floating head trapped behind a plastic window. You use the pen to draw hair, mustaches, beards, whiskers and eyebrows on Willy. It sounds simple, and truth be told, it is, but as anyone who's familiar with the toy will tell you, it's a surprising amount of fun.
Well, if you thought that the old Willy was good, hold on to your hat, because Wooly Willy just got a whole lot bigger and better! Complete with modern styling, coffee table functionality, cooperative drawing and a super sized drawing surface, this Wooly Willy coffee table is completely one of a kind and totally rad!
Best of all, it's made almost entirely from Ikea parts, so just about anyone with some very basic building know how can make one.
Wally Woo Woo!
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Signing UpStep 1: Materials and Tools
To create the Wooly Willy table you will need:
Materials:
Materials:
- original Wooly Willy toy
- iron filings
- rare earth magnets
- 1/2" thick 19 3/4" square plywood sheet
- 3/4" wooden dowel
- lag bolts
- washers
- white spray paint
- Ikea Lack 21" table
- Ikea Ribba 19 3/4" shadow box frame
- large format Wooly Willy print
- (1) 19 3/4" piece acetate
- (1) 19 3/4" matte board
- table saw
- drill & bits
- exacto knife
- Illustrator
- Photoshop
- scanner
- large format printer
- paper cutter
- wrench
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Make sure the glass is safety glass or acrylic glass if children are involved. Also consider attaching the 'pen' to the table with a cord. Nice job otherwise.
My first idea for an improvement would be to have interchangeable pictures so you could swap out Woolly Willy for Hairy Mary or a forest scene with trees with bare branches or...
Or even interchangeable contained units so you could swap out the Woolly Willy for a maze with raised walls and a ball bearing or a small blob of filings or ferro-fluid?
Great idea by the way and great execution.
romantic poems
Also, making multiple magic pens was inspired. The only improvement I can suggest is perhaps adding a drawer underneath to store the pens in when they aren't in use. Otherwise, this is such a brilliant idea! Love it!
However, great 'ible.
All in all, doing it that way might actually even be easier than cutting the spacer in half on the table saw since it's such a thin cut and the material is so delicate.
L
I could surely produce some of those if I were so inclined...
Since Instructables has already been tossing around the idea of "How to Vajazzle" in the forums, Randofo suggested that I work up a Magnetic Vajazzling device so that prospective vajazzlers could mach up their ideas before taking the plunge.
Who's got my vector art?
:)
odd.
L
L
http://smethportpa.org/events/wooly-willy-wonderdaze/
According to this detailed history of Wooly-Willy, the original Wooly-Willy used dust from magnet grinding instead of iron filings.
http://www.smethporthistory.org/smethportspeciality/wollypage.htm
Vince