Billy Carts

See the Latest Photos and plans here

If you're after simple plans to build a sturdy timber billycart check this out Timber.net.au - that one's not too hard to make. There's different plans here - Instructions to Build a Billy Cart. but I've been trying to find drawings for a cart we made in the Sixties which had a foot-brake and a steering wheel. It was a class act. The "brake" was a length of board hanging off the seat at the back with strips of bike tyre nailed to it. When you put your foot on the simple lever-type brake pedal it pulled a cable attached to the board which acted on the wheels. Back wheels only. The steering was made from broom stick with old towel wrapped around it and sashcord going to the front wheels. I'm going to try and make one for my little boy so I'll give you a video on it. Come back and check this site (RSS me)

 Bunnings are in on the act as well.

How to build a billy cart

Bladeschool goes to the other extreme.

Here you buy ready built, sophisticated, shiny chromed billycarts. Everything for the pampered child.

Our ABC has a site dedicated for every child to design and build their own billycart.

Called Rollercoaster this site has an animation which you can click on to build your own virtual billycart.

"Click on different billycart parts in the garage to design your own billycart"

At Ararat Community College in Victoria, year 7 students make use of materials they have scrounged for a variety of purposes ... all in the name of Clean up Australia.

BILLY CART

"We came up with the idea because we were going to make a go-cart but we decided to make a Billy Cart because it’s easier we also knew we had materials at home.

First we built the frame out of wood and plaster board. Then we welded the back axle, which was made out of metal, and then we put the wheels on and then painted it light blue it looks great. Then we cut off the rope because it was too short and we still need another wheel for the front, and we are about to put the seat on it so we can drive it.

The materials we used where Nails, Meta, Wheels, Paint, Chair, Plasterboard, Rope."

Scouts go Totally Wild on Billy Carts!

"1st Dural Scouts sped around the tracks for Network Ten’s Totally Wild, as they demonstrated how to build, how to ride, and how to race billy carts in an episode to be shown later this year."

I was in the Sea Scouts (1st Bayview) when I was a kid. We never built Billy carts but we "did up" old boats. I was always muckin' about in boats. I even built a canoe out of corrugated iron once.

Tom and I built two of them. We bent the sheets of iron length ways and nailed or screwed the ends to bits of 4 by 2 timber. Then we poured melted tar around the timbers to make them watertight. Voila! Instant canoe. ... Except the iron had come off someone's roof and still had some nail holes, which necessitated more melted tar. Eventually, using Dad's New Guinea "Headhunter" paddles, Tom and I paddled up to the headwaters of Pittwater and made our way deep into the magic mangrove forest, near where Pittwater High now stands.

Alas the mangroves are gone now. Along with children's sense of adventure and exploration. It is easier to watch Discovery Channel than read Swallows and Amazons.

There is even a book called "How to build a tin canoe". which you can get from Amazon.

When I looked up the author Robb White it appears he has lost the copyright of the book or something. No email, mobile phone or AMEX.

"There are several Robb Whites but I am the one who writes boat stories for various magazines and who wrote the book "How to Build a Tin Canoe." I am not allowed to sell the book because of some legal rigmarole but you can get it here."

I used to make model boats too. I would get a hunk of oregon, shape it into a boat with a saw and plane, and use dad's chisels to hollow it out. I will never know how I didn't put a chisel through my hand. I could never get the walls of the hull thin enough with the tools at my disposal so they were sometimes too heavy.

Once I used one of the wooden hulls as a mould and covered it with paper mache, which I then painted with dad's oil-based Dulux house paint to make it waterproof. After making some wicked sails out of nylon shower curtain and a mast from balsa I took it down to Bayview for a sail. It was fantastic, except I had miscalculated how much lead to put in its keel, which was sealed tight inside. So she got a bit of a lean on in a blow, but was amazingly fast upwind in a moderate, morning type breeze. No good in a black north easter though!

I wonder what happened to that boat. I suppose it got chucked out when we moved to Mosman.

Getting back to serendipity. It seems to me we are losing something nowadays. The kids I teach have little imagination. It is just so easy to find information on the net or TV. Although J.K. Rowling is to be applauded for her Harry Potter character and the reincarnation of reading as a pastime, too few will actively seek solutions to problems in an intuitive and creative way.

When I built billy carts as a kid it was out of whatever was lying around. Stuff we found as flotsam and jetsam in the bay or "chucked out" by others. There was no Bunnings to buy a ready-made palette of all you needed for your project.

What do you need?

Some wheels with axles from a pram or some such , a bit of wood as the backbone, two shorter bits of wood to mount the wheels, and a box or something to sit in, and some rope with which to steer it.

Thats your basic billycart.

Nail the axles to the short bits of wood. Nail one bit of wood to one end of the backbone.

Drill a hole through the other end of the backbone, and through the centre of the other "axle".

Bolt the second axle through the backbone.

Nail the box to the end with the fixed axle.

Drill two holes through the ends of the moveable axle and tie the rope to it so that it forms a loop which can be help by a child sitting in the box.

Find a hill. This is not much good in Central Oz, but in Kananook Avenue, Bayview, it was just fantastic. A real bender.