Wedgits Building Board

I sent a couple of emails about Wedgits and disability issues to the folks at Wedgits maker ImagAbility and they responded by sending me some stuff to try, including this "Building Board," presumably because they thought it would make for stabler building, reducing the effects of clumsiness.

It does indeed, and I recommend it for anyone with small motor problems, disability related or otherwise.

This particular structure would have been impossible without the board, but it can also be used to make simpler structures easier and less frustrating, including most of the designs on the cards (the exceptions should be quickly obvious, from how the lowest level of Wedgits is arranged).


[11/02/05] I found this picture when I was uploading the Roy Toy pictures I took today, and decided to simply append it to the Wedgits post it belongs to, rather than create a new post. It shows maybe a little better than the original picture how the center section is suspended well above the building board. Plus it has kinda nifty backlighting. The one with Archie has its own charm though. :)

Wedgits on Wheels

I got the Wedgits on Wheels set for the block colors, not the wheels, which initially failed to impress me.

But as long as I had the wheels, I had to at least give them a try, and son-of-a-gun, it turns out that I came to rather like the wheels too. :)

Wedgits

A restraint on my using Wedgits has been sensory overload from the bright colors of the standard sets, which are more inclined to trigger sensory overload the more I might benefit from building with them.

I thought the more subdued colors of the Wedgits on Wheels set might help, and indeed they do! (The photograph is especially lit for sparkle and color brightening - in subdued lighting, they are much more mellow.)

With the "quieter" colors, I may also be less vulnerable to the audio noise of the rather clattery pieces, though I will keep my noise-cancelling headphones to hand and wear them for the more precarious designs. More than once I have been driven from the room for a period of pacing and fidgeting after a structure has noisily collapsed! :)

Wedgits has card sets of sample designs, important to me for therapeutic building. The card backs of some of the sets have the same designs as the front, but in black and white, which also helps.

The primary downside of the Wedgits on Wheels pieces is that the molds really weren't designed for transparent plastic, and seeing the viscera of internal bracing and stubs, as well as sloppy glue joints, doesn't particularly enhance the esthetic experience.

Wedgits on Wheels are also rather expensive, unless one is lucky enough to chance on a set cheaply, as I did. 

Mignon

I have long wanted a Mignon metal construction set, a tiny (note the penny!) version of the Erector sets and Meccano sets that are much better known.

Unfortunately, others seem to covet them as well, and they were never very common

But last week I lucked out, and got a boxless, presumably incomplete set at a modest price.

Imagine my delight when it turned out that it actually is virtually complete - only a bent-wire crane hook and three (of 75) nuts are missing.

My luck may be due to it being an earlier, smaller set than those documented on Internet web sites - the apparently "missing" pieces were ones that had not yet been added by its manufacturer!

I've been in communication with a German expert and he seemed to be quite pleased with the information and instruction manual images I sent, and wants more. I need to scan the manual for him next.

Quite a treat. :)

[11/02/2005] I posted this elsewhere on the indicated date, but later thought I'd like to have it here as well, albeit with its original date. I've decided that the name of this blog refers to its central theme, and is well enough established at this point that it need not be a very strict rule.

Bing

I haven't been doing terribly well lately, and blockplay hasn't seemed like it would help. But tonight I sort of snuck up on myself, and got this built and photographed before I gave myself a chance to wander off.