How to Draw Construction Equipment for Kids
Posted4 months agoActive3 months ago
alyssarosenberg.substack.comOtherstoryHigh profile
supportivepositive
Debate
40/100
Children's EducationIllustrationConstruction Equipment
Key topics
Children's Education
Illustration
Construction Equipment
The article discusses the appeal of detailed illustrations of construction equipment for children, sparking a discussion on the importance of accuracy and detail in children's content.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
23m
Peak period
74
Day 1
Avg / period
19.8
Comment distribution79 data points
Loading chart...
Based on 79 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Sep 23, 2025 at 3:09 PM EDT
4 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Sep 23, 2025 at 3:32 PM EDT
23m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
74 comments in Day 1
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Oct 3, 2025 at 6:07 PM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
ID: 45351410Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 3:10:53 PM
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
if you give me a toy tool box, there better be a toy hammer that looks like a real hammer that adults use. it better not be multicolored with a big smiley face on them. i'm pretending to be a big strong adult doing a cool job. do you really think i want to show up to the pretend worksite looking like some sort of baby?!
i'm pretty sure all my friends also wanted the "real" thing, so i have to assume that the cute whimsical angle is just to help sell it to adults.
Similarly for toy guns. The weird look ain't for the kids, it's so some passerby doesn't see the "gun" and call the cops (no matter there is no regulation in most states from making a real gun to look like a toy gun so it's a totally bogus presumption).
It's a federal law.
> each toy, look-alike, or imitation firearm shall have as an integral part, permanently affixed, a blaze orange plug inserted in the barrel of such toy, look-alike, or imitation firearm
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:15%20section:...
But yeah, if someone gave me a red and blue smiley face toy tool, I'd be like WTF is this? Then again, my dad would have said the same thing without the cutesy internet acronyms.
We did have an incredible hardware store, however. Pocket hammers, mini-maglites (in any color you like), little brass screwdrivers that could come apart into 10-15 different (tiny) tools, garden sprinklers, and more, were the bread and butter of birthday parties and any other gifting event.
Sure, your parents could drive you to Española for Wal Mart, or to Santa Fe for a Toys Я Us or Target, so we weren't completely missing out on things like super soakers or lego. But nothing could really beat Metzgers Hardware.
Daycare and similar also typically had a workbench somewhere with a hammer, some nails, boards, and other bits and bobs for kids to play with. Sure, sometimes you'd bop your finger, but you learned not to do that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqci9VCugLs
I did not regularly hear the term "game console" until the late 90s. I used to think the promotion of this term was done by Nintendo in a trademark-protective maneuver to avoid rival systems being called "Nintendos" by granny, but it seems I was mistaken. Nevertheless, in the 80s we called them systems. Which system do you have, Nintendo or Sega?
Recently in my retrogaming media habit I've heard "console" used occasionally to describe video game consoles in advertisements dating back to the early 80s, but at that time it was also used by Texas Instruments to refer to the TI-99/4A computer. TI was naming all of their home products to give a space-age technical feel to them. They marketed joysticks as "Wired Remote Controllers", and cartridges for the TI-99/4A as "Command Modules" or "Solid State Software". So I don't think "console" referring to a gaming device specifically was a term of art back then.
Here's a video someone should make into a music video.[1] Same concept as a Zamboni, but for sand.
[1] https://youtu.be/UKHLG1iOBUA
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BD5oBHGmes8
[0] https://www.diggerland.com/
I dug the footings for my house on my first day ever on a backhoe, the next day I removed a few trees and built a road, then I rented an excavator and did all my underground electric in one weekend and underground water main in another. All with no experience with any large machinery nor any electrical or plumbing experience, so the weekend comments can definitely be incredibly valid.
After a few weekends I definitely don't think I'd ever consider hiring someone for any ground equipment too simple to do yourself if you have the time. Cranes might be a different story (I've moved multi million dollar equipment after a few hours on warehouse overhead cranes, as did practically everyone else in the company, but not the freestanding ones), but not sure because I used rafters instead of trusses so I could just carry all the roof stuff up in single sticks as renting cranes without an operator doesn't seem to be possible here.
Takeaway here is homeowner can probably do everything as long as they use rafters instead of trusses, to compensate for potential issues with the crane.
cement is one job I would be careful of. You can do it yourself but there cannot be breaks or mistaves as cement is curing and losing strength all the time.
The breaks are tied together with rebar, the mistakes on top were mortared level when starting my run of blocks for the foundation. Got pretty much perfectly level by last run of blocks.
Ghetto? Maybe, but a civil engineer friend said he did cold joints same as I, and the house has held up so far....
I am basically pushing my concrete to 1% of theoretical limitations, never freeze cycling it, and cold joining it exactly how my civil engineer friend did in rigorous commercial project (when asked about this he laughed, large commercial projects usually need breaks because it's too big to do one continous pour, i simply applied same technique) . Let the unpaid contractors mutter from outside my DIY walls... if they stop standing it's more likely a wildfire than the hand mixed concrete.
IRC will even allow you to use masonry as a footing, although you rarely see it.
I'm not downplaying how much someone of average competence can pull off, but when the chips are down experience counts for a lot.
I say this having replaced 140' of rotted logs in our log home this summer. Some full length. We got it done, but there was some sketchy use of car jacks, bottle jacks and a comealong to finish the job. I am 100% certain a pro would've gotten the job done with far less stress and far safer setups.
https://digthisvegas.com/
https://www.diggerland.com/helicopter-landing/
https://bigbananacar.com/
This is basically how they built the wienermobiles except they were starting with stripped chassis not a "ran when parked, free if you haul" tier winnebago.
Speaking of wienermobiles, I think it's a travesty they never made Heinz ketchup bottles to tow behind them.
They ran them at the Indy 500 this year... probably set a record for longest lap time under green.
[1] i.e. Non-fiction about machines, featuring drawings for kids with lots of accurate little details.
https://www.youtube.com/@timhunkin1/playlists
Edit: just noticed the bit about not reliant on pictures, that rules that one out. I recommend it regardless, but maybe not for the exact use-case you're describing
While most of it is pretty relaxing it opens with the author getting stabbed on the subway so watch out for that maybe.
https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
I believe there is a correlation of interest to construction equipment with certain traits and dexterities later.
Not to be the well ahkshually guy, but they rotate to keep the cement homogenized. It's a suspension of heavier and lighter materials of varying grain size. If you stop rotating it in transit you dont risk premature hardening so much, it's more that the concrete unmixes.
Even with a spinning container you need to pour it out asap. Can't keep it around for hours and hours.
I enjoy the "what does this thing do" of farm implements.
[Scopeofwork.net]
One of the explanations of Picasso's Cubist portraiture with its flat, simultaneous front and side perspective was that he was satirizing how "realistic" painters approached a three-quarter-view portrait, by sort of blending a full front view with a full side view. There's something about the human psyche that causes us to elide a full three-dimensional view of an object from our consciousness unless we deliberately practice looking for it.
https://cognativemtb.com/products/goodnight-bikes-hardcover-...
Dorling Kindersley.
I heard these songs in Norwegian first and thought the tunes were really nice, and later realized it's produced in Sweden and has English lyrics too. For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J18YqmygFa0 - Twinkle twinkle reimagined as a big digging machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGZyJb5Qc-o&list=RDoGZyJb5Qc... - Exavator song
Much like Mamoko