Toys

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	Having grandkids gives me an opportunity to use the shop to make toys. On this page you will find a few of these projects. Enjoy.

		The Carousel

Virginia found a book with a number of woodworker-type toys in it. This one looked so simple, that I decided to make one for Ethan. Well, some of the construction was simple, as I expected. Then came the finishing. What I tried was a quick paint job. I bought a bunch of "bomb-cans" from Evans and set to work. Well, bomb-can paint is not up to my expectations, and despite a good primer and prep, the paint was very slow drying, and in addition, lifted the primer. So, I dumped all the parts into a bucket of laquer thinner, dried them, resanded them and started over. I bought some automotive acylic enamel. Good stuff. I mixed it up, added the right amout of reducer and then thought that adding a little more catalyst would speed things up. Well, after waiting 4 days for drying, I was still waiting. So, I went back to the automotive paint store for the skinny on what was with this paint. The guy told me that the catalyst was a hardener, and adding more would slow things up. So for the final coat, I followed the instructions exactly, and 8 hours later I had a perfect finish: very, very brilliant and hard. We gave Ethan (and Tina) the carousel when we went to MN for Thanksgiving. It was a success, both the carousel and Thanksgiving.







			The Blocks

Some years ago, I made a set of blocks for a neighbor's kids. Virginia thought it would be nice if I made some for our grandkids. Not just out of scrap, but out of some exotic woods. So, we made the trip to High Desert Hardwood to find our exotics. We did!

I sized them for small hands. Made the cart out of American Beech, dovetailed of course. I found some wheels at Woodcraft and inlaid them with Purple Heart. Some of the woods I used were: Cocobolo, Yellowheart, Purpleheart, Zebrawood, Lacewood, Tulipwood, Luan, Poplar, Mexican Rosewood...and a few others.

Overall, the project was pretty simple. However, the wheels were another story. Too (try to) make it simple, I bought some maple wheels from Woodcraft. I decided to use wooden axles instead of just screws, and to inlay the wheels with another wood. I set to work, using just the drill press and my eyeball. What resuled were wheels that were anything but concentric. I could see the kids pulling the cart around with the thing wobbling all over. So I restarted by chucking the wheels in my metal lathe for face boring. I cut out the inlays with a hole saw, and chucked them up as well to fit them into the face bored wheels within about .002". After gluing the inlays, I rechucked the wheels for 1/2" line boring for the axles. The whole mess turned out pretty good.

Nice project: the finish was Deft, as I use with all my projects. Quick, beautiful, durable laquer.


	Updated August 10, 2001 Email to: tuku@tuku.com