K'Nex and Meccano sets contain instructions for many alternate builds (5+) compared to Lego where many sets have none, or just have suggestions for alternate builds on the back. Like Lego, I rarely took apart built models which limited me from discovering the alternate builds. We also had large K'Nex sets like the Big Ball Factory, Screamin' Serpent, and Saturn V which remained assembled having never built the alternate models, but collecting dust. We even had a pinball machine, but that one is gone after it must have broken.
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| Building the Big Ball Factory on Christmas, losing the race against daylight |
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| Screamin' Serpent |
While there is a scan and inventory for pretty much every Lego set, finding information on older K'Nex sets is harder. There are a bunch of instructions saved on a website on archive.org. Basicfun.com also has some instructions. Perhaps someone has uploaded a scan to youtube, manualslib or instructables. But it isn't hard to come across sets where one can find pictures and set numbers but no evidence anywhere of instructions. Fortunately, Meccano has a more complete history, even including scans of magazines.
My reintroduction to K'nex began with the K'Nex Dinosaurs multi-set. The walking motion and the way that the dinosaur heads, spines, and tails were created in 3 dimensions with K'Nex was mindblowing. I quickly worked my way through all of the builds.
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| The head on the T-rex really opened my eyes to the 3D potential of K'Nex |
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| The ears and trunk on this Wooley Mammoth as well |
Inspired by the dinosaurs, this ultimately led me to conceptualize building a K'Nex version of Grogu from the Mandalorian with Jenny (who was also inspired by the Wooley Mammoth and the master behind the head and ears).
The next K'nex set I rebuilt was a Robot World Set. I received this set when I was a teenager and was disappointed at the time because in my mind, it was not a robotics kit like Lego Mindstorms. I only built one of the 10 models and unfortunately I deconstructed this model to build the others before I realized that the actual model I built was absent from the scanned instructions I found. Oh well, after building all of the others, I had to re-create it based on a couple of pictures. While this set was disappointing when I was younger, I was amazed by the walking motions and the clever use of parts to create ratcheting mechanisms.
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| Robot World |
With K'Nex, there are actually not that many unique parts, so like Lego, I looked for possible sets that I could rebuild. I discovered the massive Hyperspace Training Tower builds as well as smaller builds.
I set off building the Hyperspace Training Tower. It was a massive set and I did exhaust my supply of some parts and had to borrow from Jenny's childhood K'Nex sets. It was time consuming to create, but the final result was a 6 foot tall tower with 9 different stations to clip a K'Nex figure to spin around on and I was again hooked.
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| Hyperspace Training Tower |
Next up was the Power Tower Crane, which is a ball machine that uses a crane that can lift and rotate to pickup balls and move them into the chute. I found the ball picking up and release mechanism neat and also liked the sturdy crane rotation bearing.
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| Power Tower Crane |
I then started to build a couple of roller coasters, scaling up some of the K'Nex designs so that I would not have to cut the track from my Screamin' Serpent. I enjoyed these builds as they went quicker and created exciting results.
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| Sorceror's Revenge |
Roller coasters led back to ball machines and I built all three models of the Trampoline Tower.
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| Trampoline Tower Ball Machine |
With most of the big builds on my list behind me, I plan on making more vehicles.
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