Hobbies

I always said that when I retired I'd rediscover my love for woodworking. Over the past year I've accumulated a nice shop full of tools from Craigslist. I haven't made too many projects yet, but last winter I did craft some wooden toys out of building materials left over from our house construction. So far, I've made a dump truck, a forklift, two helicopters, and a child's pull-toy grasshopper.

The dump truck was beautiful but too fragile for the grandkids to play with. When Kate asked if I'd consider donating it to Luke's school auction I agreed. Bye, bye truck








The forklift works - you can lift and lower the forks using the hand-crank and the string. The pallets are crafted out of cherry wood. It's so cute that we decided to keep it.


I made two helicopters - mostly out of plywood - and gave them to the Weaver boys. I think they're still functional.


Lastly, I made a cute pull-toy grasshopper for Kai's daughter, Mary. Unfortunately, because I hand made each and every piece including the wheels, axles, and pivot pins, the toy doesn't work well unless you put a lot of extra weight on the body. The small mis-alignments of the various parts and pieces resulted in too much rolling resistance. It's still darling.


The dump truck and forklift are about 12 inches long. The helicopters are about 7 inches long, and the grasshopper body is about 9 inches long. Except for the helicopters, they're all built of walnut (our staircase), clear fir (our house interior trim), beech (our cabinets), cherry, and oak.