A volunteer project, shed manager Peter Bailey said the kōhanga reo reached out and they ‘‘set to and drew up what we thought they might like’’. Once approved, they came up with features to add like monkey bars, firefighter’s pole, double slides, and a climbing wall. When the plan was finalised, they just had to build it. Over 200 hours of work went into the project he said. ‘‘We started in late January doing 12 hours a week with three of us working on it.’’
‘‘There’s different things that have been done, the likes cutting out guns and portholes, that was done by one person on a CNC machine.’’ He described the project as a ‘‘real combined effort from the whole shed’’, with their engineering department having built the monkey bars. ‘‘But the main unit was only three or four of us.’’ They hade to make sure it was ‘‘child-proof’’. ‘‘It’s the sort of thing we’ve had to be aware of in the construction. It’s all tanalised or H3 timber,
stainless steel screws everywhere, it’s been a big project to do.’’ The pirate ship was loaded on a truck and taken to the kōhanga reo last week on Monday afternoon.
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