Custom Toddler Banks: Poplar Hardwood and Simon’s T-Rex

Today we’ll make custom toddler banks, the biggest one to date, is a T-rex bank I designed and will be making for my son Simon, he’s two and a half years old and almost filled his first 12″ tall S bank so he’s due for another one for Christmas!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXyLN8zJkN4/

SandboxRanch.com doesn’t just make custom toddler banks, we make banks for all ages of course.

As with all the custom banks made at SandboxRanch.com, they start off life as rough sawed kiln dried lumber that’s then cut down to size and glued-up together to create strong banks, in this case, these banks are made out of poplar hardwood.

After the glue has dried on these soon to be custom toddler banks, it’s time to clean-up the front and the back of the new slab before transforming what you see into custom banks for people to enjoy all around the world with.

Now that I have a clean surface, front and back for these custom toddler banks, it’s time to go ahead and cut all the letter and dinosaur banks.

My history with making custom banks is decades in the making, here’s one concept I had that I plan on releasing shortly on the website, there is more than one way to store money!

The first step of making these custom toddler banks, in this case, that’s where all these are going for, is carving out the coin slot and then the area holding the money as each pass I make over this glued-up slab of poplar weakens it, so you want to carve out the biggest pieces first and work your way down the list, hence why having a tool changer is such a massive upgrade for SandboxRanch.com.

Without a tool changer, I was severely limited in the number of tooling I could use and the type, and as manually changing it was a process that could be prone to errors, it’s something you want to do as little as possible for the integrity of the final product, but with an automatic tool changer, who cares, switch around tools as often as I want at SandboxRanch.com!

Round or square letter banks, animal shapes, birds, or whatever else you can imagine, SandboxRanch.com can make them for you to spec!

It’s seriously night and day the processes I used from my very first batch of prototype banks earlier in the year compared to what I use now, the results are not only better, but dramatically faster and repeatable to no end, these custom toddler banks are a direct beneficiary of that.

I’ve grown to really enjoy the process, literally from rough lumber to finished shipped product – each step along the ladder is just so enjoyable to work with and optimize, this is something that I don’t get much of with my main business CNCROi.com because it’s mostly one-offs of customer’s designs and there isn’t much need or room for prototyping and process optimizing as there is for SandboxRanch.com, custom toddler banks or other wise.

This batch of custom toddler banks finishes up the prototyping (more like proof of concept) of the rounded letter banks now all available on SandboxRanch.com, I now have a complete square and rounded bank options on the site… and that’s only the beginning for me as I have way more ideas than I’ll ever have wood.

Unlike carving, drilling is one of those operations that’s tedious to do and I’m so happy that I no longer have to do it manually with a drill, so many alignment issues that I no longer need to contend with for SandboxRanch.com banks!

After all the internal carving is all finished, it’s time to make all the drill holes that will match perfectly with the laser cut acrylic fronts, I absolutely love this process because I use to do this manually with a drill!

After the drill holes are all done, the next step is cutting these custom toddler banks out of the glued-up slab I made earlier, as you can see, there is very little scrap left after all these processes are done, I probably turn half of the glue-up into saw dust and the other half goes off to the fire pit for even more enjoyment!

You can see the finished slab made at SandboxRanch.com below, these custom toddler banks look fantastic and you can see Simon’s T-Rex bank is a formidable size compared to the other 8″ tall banks.

Custom kids banks are for more than just birthdays, though that is a wonderful time to give these out to celebrate another year and another bank that needs to be filled-up.

The next process is something I look forward to optimizing a lot more with a very large industrial bandsaw, using a jigsaw to this type of work is not what I would call a joyful process.

After the jigsaw work, it’s time to go ahead and router off the ledge all around these banks, I leave this on the finished banks from the CNC to make sure everything stays flat until the final bit of wood chipping for these custom toddler banks.

The finished cut-out custom toddler banks are now ready for their acrylic front or for Simon’s bank, time to head to the finishing department for making it a nice dark color and other customization options I will be adding to the website shortly like acrylic mirror inlays.

It’s amazing how much virtual pixels, CNC machines and a mix of power and hand tools are required to make each and every one of these custom toddler banks, it really covers many aspects of woodworking, skills through equipment.

When I first started SandboxRanch.com, I was concerned that 8″ was too big, but now that I’ve done some massive custom wooden banks, it feels short, it’s funny how perspectives change over time.

The next step along the journey for Simon’s T-Rex bank is to stain it, this will transform the poplar hardwood it’s made from into a very dark cherry look without the expense of doing this out of solid hardwood cherry (which SandboxRanch.com can of course do as well).

Comparing the above and below picture, you can really see just how much of a transformation happens just by staining every surface of this custom toddler bank for my son Simon.

The next step is to see how my inlay fits inside the bank, this is a new feature I will be launching shortly at SandboxRanch.com for all the banks, basically, it allows you to create a very unique look, further down the total customization path, for your very own child’s (or adult) wooden bank.

Once the cheap cardboard is tested and works, the next step is to migrate to the expensive gold mirror that will go inside of Simon’s dinosaur bank, this way, regardless of what coins he puts into it, they will be doubled and reflected as gold coins!

The finished look really looks spectacular, the inlay is glued into place, so there are no screws or hardware visible, though if you wanted to, SandboxRanch.com could also affix these inlays using said hardware for the custom toddler banks.

When it comes to making custom banks for kids and adults, offering total customization is my idea of fun, there is nothing standard about anything we make at SandboxRanch.com.

As I’m building-up a little inventory from making all the banks thus far, it’s time for a product shot and for the heck of it, a banner covering the ugly wall the CNC router is next to.

There are so many lessons learned from this picture of custom wooden banks made at SandboxRanch.com, the diversity of the offerings thus far after a year of work are very impressive but they will be all the more so in the years to come.

This is a lot of inventory that will wind itself down with orders coming into the website, but there are always more ideas to follow so I should have a constant influx of new inventory items that are ready to ship in a moment’s notice, but due to the nature of this business, there is no point holding onto inventory for any extended period of time.

Want custom toddler banks? Contact SandboxRanch.com and we’ll make it to order and ship it right to your door!