Wooden Tank Toy

In line with the last few posts, here is  another wooden toy; the “Grizzly” tank. Wooden treads glued to cloth backing rotate on eight sets of wheels. The tank commander is removable. This was a Christmas gift for an eight-year-old boy.

The B25

Just to follow up the last toy posts about the corsair, here are some pictures of a more complicated toy plane built for an eight-year-old.

Like the Corsair toy, a crew of bears flies the B-25, “Bearfoot Bomber”. Unlike the Corsair, it has quite a few moving parts, including, retractable landing gear and Bombay doors that open. However, the design and execution follows the same process described in the posts about the Corsair toy. I started with drawings done actual size, and built the body of the aircraft and the wing/engines as separate units that do not get glued together until quite near the end of the assembly process.

Drawings for the B 25

The other challenge of the B25 is that the acrylic canopies for top-turret gunner, the nose of the aircraft, and the cockpit are shapes that are more complex to mold. I ended up making several attempts at each shape before I got results that met my needs.

lots of complex plexiglass

Landing gear up!

Close up of one of the B 25 crew

Corsair #4

Finishing the toy: At this stage, and before I do anything else, I am going to give the toy several coats of varnish. You can use anything you like. Personally, I am more in favor of old-fashioned oil base varnish. My reasons have to do with longevity and wear. Simply put I have never had any other product hold up as well. An alternative is Tung oil, which works well too, but has a lasting odor that some children will not like.

Again, I will repeat that this is just my experience, but I have had very poor results with poly-products. I have used both water-based, and oil based poly and what I have found is that they do not bond well enough to the wood to hold up to constant play. The result is that they chip, crack and peel, and that makes me nervous because I don’t want the little ones eating chips of anything that comes off a toy.

Varnished toy

Once the varnishing is complete, painted details can be added. I paint on insignia, nose art, and any other decorations. In this case, my nephew is only two, so I am keeping it simple. However, if the child is a little older, the decoration is an area where you can personalize a toy, giving it a name, or insignia that have a special meaning to the child in question.

The last two pieces of the project are the propeller disk and the canopy, both of which will be molded from acrylic that is one-eighth of an inch thick.

The acrylic pieces can be a challenge. The propeller is just a disk of clear acrylic, drilled on the drill press and cut out on the band-saw. However, even such a simple piece must be carefully drilled and cut to avoid blistering and cracks. The cockpit canopy is made by carefully and slowly heating a piece of acrylic and shaping it over a poplar form. In some cases I will use a vacuum jig to help form the canopy, but I have to point out here that complex shapes are hard to achieve and it takes practice to get good results, so the simpler the design and the easier it is to execute, the better your chances of success. If you want to know more about shaping acrylic, or plastics, go to “you tube” and type in vacuum molding.

I glue on acrylic parts using two part marine epoxy that has been slightly thickened. The resulting paste will be stronger than either the acrylic or the wood, and it will not be as prone to run or drip.

The finished toy:

The completed toy

Wooden Corsair #3

The third phase of construction on the corsair is the tail/after-cockpit section that defines the cockpit. As part of this phase, I will be making the pilot too.

If you look at the top of the body of the plane, you will see a long tapered flat spot where this last section will attach. The shape of the long tapered flat spot will determine the shape of the after-cockpit.

Cut rough and then sanded to fit, the after-cockpit has a vertical slot to help hold the tail in place.

In the aft end of the body I have cut a lap for the horizontal stabilizer.

The tail wheel is pegged so that it can swivel.

All of these pieces are glued together:

The pilot is shaped out of select pine and glued into the cockpit:

In the next section we will look at the acrylic and the finishing steps.

Wooden Corsair #2

In the last post, we glued, cut and turned the body of the corsair. In this post, I will concentrate on the wings and landing gear:

The wings will be made of two pieces of polar glued together. They will go through five steps; The pieces will be glued together, they will be squared up, drilled for the landing gear, cut on the band saw, and finish-shaped.

Here is the rough “blank” of wood with the rectangular holes for the landing gear. The landing gear are in the background and are made up from commercially made wooden wheels glued and pegged to uprights.

The rough shape is cut on a band-saw.

The wings are shaped with knife, plane and sandpaper.

The landing gear is glued in.

Now you can see how the wing and body go together:

Wooden Corsair #1

This is not a “how to” site, but I have had a number of requests for a step-by-step explanation for making a simple wooden toy. To that end, I am going to walk you through my process for making a simple wheeled toy. Before I start, let me make a couple of disclaimers: One is that I cannot stress safety enough. Whether it means wearing safety glasses and a dust mask, or simply being careful near any kind of tool with a blade—toy making is not fun if you get hurt. Second, I do not usually work from measured drawings. I know that frustrates some wood workers, but I sketch things out at actual size and design almost entirely by eye looking most closely at proportions.

This is a toy for my youngest nephew and is an airplane pull-toy, specifically: a F4U Corsair.

The first step I take is to sketch out the toy actual size. This allows me to think out how much wood the project will take and what the dimensions of rough stock will need to be. It is also where I start thinking through the construction process. The corsair will be very simple; fixed wings, fixed landing gear, and other than the wheels, no moving parts.

As I draw out the dimensions, I have decided that I will turn the body of the aircraft on the lathe. I will make the wings and landing gear as one unit, and I will make the tail and cockpit as a third unit.

The toy will be varnished wood, with a clear canopy over the cockpit, and a bear as the pilot. If you don’t know why a bear is flying a Corsair you need to read “the whole bear thing”.

The cockpit canopy and the propeller are the only non-wooden parts. Both will be made of clear acrylic.

The rest of this post will concentrate on the body of the aircraft.

The body is made up of several pieces of poplar glued together for the lathe. Once dry, the piece will go through four steps before going to the late. First I will pre drill what will be the front of the plane with a one-and-a-quarter inch diameter hole that is about a quarter-inch deep. Next I will drill an eighth-inch diameter pilot hole in the center of the inch-and-a-quarter hole. The 1/8″ hole will allow me to center the piece on the lathe more easily and will also serve as a pilot hole for a larger hole that will be drilled much later on when it is time to attach the propeller. The next two steps involve making cuts that will allow for easier assembly later.

While the block is still rectangular, I will cut out the notch where the wing will attach, and I will make the long cut in the upper body where the cockpit, after cockpit, and tail will attach. I want to make these cuts now because the rectangular block will present 90-degree angles to the saw making the alignment of pieces later automatic and easy. The last step before the body is put on the late is to take off the corners of the piece and make it eight sided. Thus the piece looks like this:

On the lathe, I will turn the cowling, and the basic shape of the body.

The body of the aircraft on the lathe

another shot on the lathe

There we have the first piece:

Wood for Toys

I did not get around to posting much material on this site last month, and since the holidays are coming, I am going to try to put up a short series of posts on making wooden toys. This first one is limited to materials.

I am often asked what kind of wood I like best for making wooden toys and the answer surprises a lot of people. Poplar. Most wood-workers pass poplar by. It has a strange greenish color and if you ask about it at the lumberyard, the most often repeated assessment you get is that it is a great wood to use if you are going to paint it. Since most carpenters HATE to paint, the discussion often ends there. However, for making toys, poplar has some wonderful properties.

Most of the toys that I make have pieces that are complex in shape. Poplar has a close dense grain that is not prone to splitting, which makes it a good candidate for complex shapes. Additionally the grain is generally very straight and has less tendency towards knots than other species. Technically a soft-hardwood, Poplar stands up to hard use better than a softwood like pine, but is much easier to shape than a hardwood like maple or oak. I do use hard maple, ash, or oak for parts that will be repeatedly stressed, and I use select pine for carving pilots, drivers, or other figures, but poplar does the bulk of the work. It is comparatively light for having such a dense grain, which translates to; less prone to break when dropped on the floor. Other undeniable virtues are that it is readily available, fast growing, and a common species that is relatively inexpensive. All of which make it an ideal material for toy making.

If I can go back to the paint issue for a moment, poplar does have an unusual color, but I leave it bright under several coats of varnish or tung oil on a regular basis. One of the reasons for this is that varnish dulls the more unusual greenish tones in the wood, the other is that over time, varnished poplar turns a beautiful golden brown. Toys that might have looked a bit pale and raw when new turn into beautiful heirlooms over time. It does not take that much time either, a couple of years can make significant transformation. A decade can transform a toy made of poplar from a pale loved plaything to a thing of beauty worthy of a special place of admiration.

New Poplar