Thank you for your comment.

Thanks John. Yes getting a Block Setter to fully rotate needs a lot of space! I built this getting in for 20 years ago and havnt the heart to take it to bits! But, yes, they come apart much faster than they go together. I am surprised how much interest there is in this model this and also the tremendous interest in my Crawler Tractor elsewhere in this channel. But then Meccano is a wonderful toy which, sadly, has gone a bit out of fashion in recent years due to competition from construction sets beginning with L!

Thank you. Please feel free to check out the other Meccano models on my channel.

Thank you for your comment and good luck with construction. Further detail can be found on the South West Meccano website southwestmeccano.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Block-Setter-detail.pdf

Thank you. I tried a couple of the official Meccano plans before settling on this one. No plans to dismantle it.

thanks for your comment. Its certainly an iconic model.

Mecanno was intended for primary school age boys, age 6 onwards - 12 at most. When I was 6, a friend of my father gave me a large collection of used Mecanno parts - probably because his own children had out-grown Mecanno By the time I was 7, nearly 8, I was building tower cranes just like the one in this video. Just as big and just as complex. In my cranes I used the Mecanno ball race thrust bearing - from memory it was about 150 mm diameter and had rim teeth to take the Mecanno chain. I built lorries with fully functioning brakes (Bowden cable operated), steering, clutch, gearbox and differential too. Like Sanspareil, I found getting sufficient power a problem. I grew up on a farm, we didn't have electricity, and the Mecanno clockwork motor was completely inadequate. However, after a while my Mother bought me a Mammod model steam engine (these had mounting holes compatible with Mecanno) - this did have enough power output. By age 9/10 I had outgrown Mecanno and switched to building radios and other electronic devices. Boys up until the 1970's were a lot smarter mechanically than the later generations - I was in no way unique. The following generations were dumbed down by the pretty plastic Leggo. Their post war parents were more affluent and provided their children with a lot more variety in toys and activities. Also, after-school sports became a distraction away from non-team things you did yourself. So you are quite wrong - boys were indeed able to build things just like this. Old guys who build Mecanno are just like old guys who play with scale model electric train sets. Good on them for having fun, and for me at age 76 watching videos like this one is a quick bit of childhood nostalgia. But DO NOT think Mecanno was not a toy for small boys.

@@keithammleter3824 I never intended to hit a nerve, but meant that most of us never had the money to get enough Meccano to even come close to something as big as this. Certainly not in the 30's when my dad grew up. Apart from that, as far as I can recall, most boys (and girls for that) of say 6-8 were certainly not able or skilled to build something like this. You seem to be quite talented at construction and if you join others in this it may seem the whole world is as capable as you. I assure you on my part most people are not even close to your skills. That is simply my experience. So enjoy as do I and please let your experience be yours and mine mine.

@@pauldelcour : You did not hit a nerve. But I posted as I think you are wrong. In the 1930's, they were the depression years, and families could not afford to spend money on toys. But I was a small boy in the 1950's - they were the post-war boom years, and parents could afford Meccano. Also, being made mostly of mild steel and brass, it was very durable, and many kids got, as I did, a set of parts that some other kid had outgrown. In the 1950's, Meccano was very common. All the big city department stores had Meccano counters. As I recall, the axles/shafts could become bent if some 6 or 7 year old overloaded them with his weight, but most fathers could straighten them out. Forget girls. Until the 1980's, girls never much got involved in "boy's stuff". Interestingly, Lego seems today to be enjoyed by a fraction of girls and less so by boys. In the 1950's not ALL, but a large fraction of boys certainly could handle Meccano and build operable trucks and tower cranes. That was the generation of mechanically minded boys - just as boys today are hopeless at mechanics but know how to use iPads and mobile phones, and play computer games. The 1950's kids were the generation that often had a shed in the back yard they used as their "laboratory' in which their chemistry set knowledge was extended to make things go bang. I and most of my friends had a 'lab". Don't underestimate the brain of a child. Our intelligence peaks at about age 20. Fortunately experience compensates for the loss of IQ as we age. A 12 year old has about the same intelligence as a 60 year old. When personal computers became common in the 1980's, I conducted YMCA "computer camps" for children and pensioners. Most 6 year olds clearly learnt faster and could out-think anyone over 70. You only needed to show a 6 year old how to use Microsoft paint once. Half an hour later they show you pictures of rabbits and whatnot. Teaching a 70 year old, you had to explain the same things several times and some still wouldn't get it. I had one guy at work, only 60, who simply could not master using a mouse. The harder he tried, the madder he got, and the worse the result. We had to sack him. Yet to talk to he was quite normal. Disclaimer: I am now quite over 70.

@@keithammleter3824 Ha, that's so recognizable. Apart form IQ, could it not also be that kids are used to what they grow up with? Adjusting to quite new things has never been easy. I understand the basic of computers and use them all the time, but my wife will never understand the basics. She wants computers to think like she does, reveiling a major issue with a lot of apparatus: how user friendly they are or should be. Experience wise, I could not be a better music composer and arranger now than a long time ago, being now 63. I blame that to experience rather than IQ. We're a fascinating species at a time when technology changes at a higher rate than ever leaving behind more and more people it seems. We really need to be careful how we play this.

Thank you for your kind comment

Thanks for the compliment. It’s far from perfect being a tad slower than prototype but I am quite pleased with it. I made it about 15 years ago from mainly resprayed pieces and just haven’t got the heart to dismantle it so it takes up quite a bit of space in the living room!

exactly !

Yes you are correct-well spotted! They have been corrected since the video was made.

Thank you.

I think Meccano is can be more sophisticated for building large models. There are also not so many specialist parts in Meccano as there are in Lego so imagination and innovation plays a bigger part! Thanks for your comment.

It isn't so much that Mecanno is more sophisticated than Lego. You can get Lego parts that do what can't be done with Mecanno. But Mecanno parts are more generic, more fundamental, so building something out of Mecanno requires a lot more technical understanding of mechanisms, and considerably better imagination and ability to think. I very much believe that my experience with Mecanno as a small child is what led me to develop sufficient intelligence to go to university and become a professional engineer - the first in my extended family of farmers and farm hands to do so. Mecanno was conceived at a time when small boys constructed their own hill trolleys out of scrap wood and pram wheels, made their own slingshots and other weapons - things that are beyond what modern children can do. Modern toys are things that children just watch - their imagination and thinking is not tested. Lego is somewhere between, more on the "just watch" side. Mothers prefer their children to have Lego, because children are not frustrated as they can be when a Mecanno model doesn't work out. and because it is plastic and comes in pretty colours. Mecanno was just "industrial" green, red, and brass. When my generation attempted a Mecanno model a bit too ambitious and it didn't work, if he cried it was "tough it up, dopey - it's your own fault" - These days it is thought to be bad parenting to stress kids like that. When my generation (born 70 to 80 years ago) were children, we were praised for technical skill. Today, technical skill is somehow looked down upon.

Thank you

Thanks for comments. I cut some No8s down to 9fs for some that were not so visible so cheated a bit! I made Sm4 several years back but while looking good found the gearbox struggled when transmitting power to the wheels.

A later GMM model instructions leaflet suggested using trunnions instead of the 1.5 inch angle girders. This would be on the upper part of the main boom sections where the whole assembly is a straight right angle. To prevent screw pull through when attaching the bracing strips/girders, washers can be used on the irregular holes of the trunnions.

@@robertneill3057 yes that could be a good solution.