Academy da Vinci Leverage Crane Kit Review

By Michael Benolkin

Review

Leonardo Da Vinci developed a number of designs that were well before their time. His vision of vertical flight with his spiral helicopter, paddle wheel-powered vessels, and the early armored car may have been laughable in his day, but were the stepping stones for today's MV-22 Osprey, turbine-powered Ticonderoga-class cruisers, and M1 Abrams tank (and their analogs from other nations of course).

Here is the latest release from Academy in the da Vinci series with this leverage crane. Developed from his sketchbook concepts, this mechanism is brought to reality by the engineers at Academy Models. I enjoy seeing these kits arrive in our lab and of course it went straight to the workbench after getting the parts photos completed.

What you see here is a concept for a heavy-lift crane system that uses a ratcheting system to rotate in only one direction while providing leverage to raise the load with a fraction of the force needed with a simple pulley. When you fiddle with the mechanism in the assembled model, you can see on the front side (with the placard) the lever used to raise the load. On the rear side, you see a selector for up/down which allows the load to be lowered under control as well. What you have here is the early version of a standard ratchet wrench with loosen and tighten selector on one side and the lever to affect the object on the other.

This is another fun project and you can do a quick-build-up since everything is snap together, or you can take a little more time and add some paint details to bring out the nice work done by Academy.

My sincere thanks to MRC for this review sample!