Soooo, I am one of those people that always thinks I can "do it myself" Forty plus years now and I still think the same way. It's like golf. You hit 100 shots and they are all bad but you have one or two that are successful and that's what keeps you going. Well, all these glider toys on the market and from my limited experience, they hold their attention for a day or three then it's on to something new...and there better be something new mister or it's nibbles on the ear for you!
So I have been fooling around with plans and materials for simple but challenging toys. That sounds nice but I haven't actually come up with anything simple enough (or safe enough) that I want to actually make. Well I made my own wheel the other day (and documented the process) but it was neither safe or simple and barely functioned. I learned though, and I'm going to try again. As soon as I figure this photo pail thing out I would like to throw them up there for a laugh.
Anyway back to my exciting discovery! I had a million things to do yesterday but what did I actually do? tore down the whole glider room, cleaned and re-built it. While I was doing this and replacing some of the bamboo trellis with tight rope I came across an old retractable dog leash. The kind with a plastic housing that either retracts or doesn't depending on if you have a plastic button depressed. A very low wattage light bulb went on above my head.....

I hung the leash from the highest point of access and weighted it so that it barely held it's position. Next I attached a hunk of hard sugar crystals to the end. I try and use these to let the gliders have a lick or three when I'm "training" them to jump to me. (training not going great btw.) Wouldn't you know it a minute later and Lucy the shy one was the first to "ride the express elevator" down to the floor!!!!
she got on for a lick and slowly sunk to the floor, got off and watched as the leash slowly retracted back up! Now this isn't really what the leash was made for and it's old and I really can't adjust the weight as much as I'd like but holy guacamole it was cool. A glider elevator. I thought that this could be useful for older gliders that are more brittle and maybe the special needs ones as well. I think with some tinkering I could make a device that would be perfectly weighted and have enough resistance so that the rate of descent and ascent would be the same and no risk of danger. I'm pretty excited so I thought i would see what you guys thought. I have a short video in slow motion I'm going to try and put it on the photo bucket or maybe imgur now and I'll come back and put a link.

Have a good day all!!

edit i have spent the last HOUR trying to put a simple video of the "glider-vator" lol on line somewhere, anywhere. i give up. i have it down to 13 seconds but i can't seem to do anything right on the computer today , oh and i'm dumb.

sounds interesting. What about utube?

https://reddit-uploaded-video.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/t2_8feqe%2Fnvks0x3n05k01

I wish i knew this stuff better, hopefully this works, don't know how to make it blue...

ok i think it works but for the life of me i don't know why it's all in slow motion...lol...the sound is pretty cool though.. enjoy!


I spent another four hours trying to make another better elevator. I tood a fidget spinner and trimmed off all the outside stuff so that it was just a round disc. then put a groove in the middle for the string to follow. it kind of works pretty good but the two ends of the string are too close so they get tangled up. so i think i need two pulleys spaced apart. also the string keeps "jumping the track" so I made it as deep as possible with little improvement.

I then tried a solid rubber wheel on a caster. the groove this time was a half inch deep but same problem with the twisting of the string.

Also having trouble with weight adjustment although without a working model it's hard to solve that problem..Need to be able to easily adjust the weight . so for now i was using a small bolt with a nut and adding washers. I'm sure i'm waaaay overthinking something but i'm just so fried today.

https://imgur.com/gallery/3Zn

Bonus....
Oh sure, NOW it's blue.

Love that Flexileash elevator.

That is cool!

I have to agree with everyone, it is pretty cool! It looks fun too!

How in the world did you coax them to do this?

Awesomeness!!!! That was creative thinking.

Aww thanks everyone! I just like avoiding all of the things I have to do in real life and re-arranging the glider room instead. I swear I can't even go in there off schedule on my day off or I lose an hour or so just tidying up or re-arranging or something. I just keep trying to make it nicer and more challenging for the girls. I don't want them to get bored.

I have a goal to try and bring some kind of movement to the room that is safe but fun for the gliders. like a slow train or something that they could perch on and ride around. I know that sounds crazy but.

tomorrow I'll post the pictures of me trying to make my own glider wheel. It took all day and a few trips to the store. The wheel ended up weighing about two pounds, barely held together, would hardly spin vertically but horizontally it would spin for over two and a half minutes on one spin!