A Toy Model T Ford From The GREAT BOOK OF WOODEN TOYS

Built from a plan in the book, "GREAT BOOK OF WOODEN TOYS" by Norm Marshall and Bill Jones.

A pretty good outcome. I've built a number of toys from the above cited book, and they've all turned out ok.

Mr. Marshall was a brilliant designer; all of the toys in the book are exquisite toy caricatures of the real things. That said, I have a few issues with the book.

First off, the book's front cover carries a sub-title of sorts, "More Than 50 Easy-to-Build Projects". [My emphasis.]

Hmmm. Maybe it's just me, but I'd say that the toys are far from 'easy-to-build'. They call for a well-equipped shop, and many of the operations needed to complete a toy are challenging.

The dimensioned line drawings often lack crucial dimensions/placements. Whoever drew them was not a skilled draftsman.

The photographed prototypes are very fine -- they exhibit superb craftsmanship and technical execution. The text's advice on how to achieve similar results is sketchy at best. I especially take issue with the instructions given about fabricating wheels with hole saws.

Hole saws are rough-and-ready tools for the construction trades. They're for cutting holes through joists for the passage of plumbing and wiring material. They're not designed to create clean discs to be used as toy wheels, as the author would have one believe. I attempted the hole saw method for making wheels for this project, and here's a view of what I got from a couple of Milwaukee^[1] hole saws.

Rough, nasty facsimiles of wheels that sanding on a mandrel probably can't salvage -- nothing like the clean, slick wheels seen in the book's photographs of the project. My only use for hole saws anymore is to cut oversize blanks that can be lathe-turned to size on a mandrel. That's how I got the wheels you see in the top photograph.

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Anyway, I sstained the Model T with Minwax No. 235 Cherry Wood Finish. Here's a view of the final product.

Not great -- blotchy and uneven. It will have to do.

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To sum up my take on the book, it is indeed loaded with excellent, charming toy designs. They are not 'easy-to-build'; they're quite challenging.

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Note:

[1] Most of my hole saws are Milwaukees; those are widely available. I have one Diablo hole saw. The Diablo seems to produce a finer cut than do the Milwaukees, so there are variations in cut quality between manufacturers. Still and all, I find the book's emphasis on hole saw wheel making to be misguided.

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