First Wooden Toy

Last week I finished my first wooden toy for Alex. It's a little car, with people that come out. Alex likes it, and readily recognized the "people" as such. The wheels turn, and the whole thing is about 7" long. It's all glued together - there is no metal in this toy!


(For those who don't know, I bought him a bandsaw for his birthday, and he agreed to let me use it from time to time.) My goal is to build a few trucks and other assorted toys. In any case, this was a first attempt to determine: a) how hard is it to do (not bad - the parts I thought would be hard were easy, the easy parts were harder than anticipated), and b) how interested is he in what I create (seems to like it so far).

The book I purchased for truck ideas and plans has been a big hit - he likes to flip through the book and look at pictures of the finished trucks. He knows all of them by heart now. The surprise (for me) was that those trucks are a bit more "advanced" than is appropriate for his age, so I won't be tackling them for a while. My research indicates that a 2 year old is happier with the above abstractions, or something similar. I am intrigued by the scale used for Plan City toys, and may pursue something similar. Although one could argue it would be cheaper to buy the toys, I don't think there is anything that equals watching Alex play with a toy I made especially for him.

So, what is the next project? A rocking horse! I found this very nice rocking horse on-line, and discovered that he toymaker sells plans on how to make the horse. In this case, I will save some money, and have the personal satisfaction of making a toy for Alex that he will pass along to his children one day.