We've got a couple kids in the neighborhood now. They were both born in December 2025, and I gave them both rattles. For Christmas 2026, I decided to make a couple toy cars for them, based on ones I saw that Crowie had made a few years ago.

There are a lot more details in the various pages making up the build, but after four cars, I think I've zeroed in on a pretty solid, playable toy, so I documented the build along with things I learned not to do along the way.

Making the individual parts:

1. Axles
2. Wheels
3. Body
4. Fenders
5. Assembly

The parts are all finished on their show surfaces before assembly. Ring-porous woods (oak and russian olive, mostly) get a coat of shellac, followed by sanding with progressively finer sandpaper. I typically work up the grits going 60, 120, 220, then 400. Then I finish using three to five coats of RMP Half & Half with a quick buff with 0000 steel wool after each coat cures. This leaves a pretty dang good matte surface.

And then Assembly, followed by touch-up to remove any glue squeeze-out and either a final coat or three of shellac, or a quick buff with carnauba wax.

Thanks for looking!

#ToyCars #contents

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First I get the axles cut to length and shaped. See the Axles section for more if you don't remember it. For the length, I make the rear axle the width of the body, plus two rear wheels' worth, plus about 3-5mm (1/8-3/16 inch) to give them a little room to move. If the axle is a little long, that's better than a little short, since you'll be trimming the ends of the axle once the wheels are on.

The axle gets a small kerf, about ¾ the width of the wheel, sawed into each end of it, perpendicular to the grain. I then glue one wheel onto the axle and glue a wedge into the kerf. The wedges are normally cut to about a 14° angle (half of a 1:4 dovetail angle) and maybe an inch long. I mostly make them from oak offcuts, but sometimes use ash.

Once that's dried, I'll put the axle through the body of the car, and test how it rolls. If there are any catches, this is the last chance to fix them (short of drilling out an axle and making a new one, DAMHIKT). Then I put on the other wheel and wedge it. Make sure to clean up any squeeze-out on the axle, so it doesn't get into the body (again, DAMHIKT).

Then I repeat the whole deal with the front axle, which I generally give an extra mm or two in length beyond the body width plus the width of the two front wheels. I like having the front wheels spaced a little farther from the body, and have pondered putting in small spacers so they don't slop side-to-side, but haven't figured out a solution I'm happy with yet.

Once the glue holding the wheels on has set (at least a half-hour, but usually overnight), I'll get out a saw, and a knife or chisel and clean up the end of the axles and the wedges. Just saw the wedges and axles off a little proud of the wheel (a mm or so, or between 1/16 and 1/32 inch) and then taper the edges of the axle down to the wheel using the knife or chisel.

With both axles on and dried (I usually give them overnight), I can figure out where the alignment holes for the fenders go. I put one fender against the side of the body and clamp it in place where it looks good. I then turn it over and drill ⅛ inch (3mm) holes through the body and about ¼ inch (6mm) into the fender. One at the front and one at the back. These holes are just for alignment, but they're both in places where the fender is thin, so I'm careful to avoid partly missing the fender.

With the holes drilled in the body and one fender, I place skewers into the holes (no glue yet!) and remove the clamp. Then I align the second fender, matching it to the first, then remove the first fender, and clamp the second into place. I'll also make a light pencil line along the top of each fender at this stage so I can sand off any finish from the body below the line where the glue will need to stick the fender to the body. Then I drill through the exiting holes through the body and about ¼ inch into the second fender.

After the holes are drilled, it's time to clean up any extra finish on the body and inside of the fenders. I just use a piece of 60 grit sandpaper and make sure I've got a good surface to glue to without messing up any of the finish that will still be visible.

With that done, I apply glue to the body and inside of the fenders, glue skewers into the holes and the body, and put the fenders onto the car and clamp them in place. I'll come back the next day to clean off any squeeze-out and do a final inspection on the finish. There's always something that can use a little touch-up.

Finish to this point has just been oil, but now that everything is together, I will also apply a few coats of shellac. A wipe-on poly would work too. Just a little extra something to make it pretty for Christmas.

#toyCars #howTo #assembly

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I generally do not use the template. I will mark the positions of the wheels and body on the fender blank, and then sketch the fender shape using curvy things to make them look good. But I made a template, and if I need to make a large batch of identical cars, I'll use that. I would suggest not using the template until you've made a few cars, and tweaked them to match your own style.

The next step is cutting them out. Then smooth the tops and bottoms with a rasp and 60 grit sandpaper.

And then cut the two fenders apart using a bandsaw or a hand-saw.

Next, mark which sides are going to get glued to the body (I tend to use what was the outside of the board, as commercial lumber is smooth enough to glue together as long as there are no visible flaws), and clamp one fender in place. Drill a pair of ⅛” (3mm) alignment holes about ¼ inch (6mm) deep into the fender material through the body. Bamboo skewers (sold for grilling meat) will fit nicely into these holes, and will make gluing things up easier. Then unclamp that first fender and align it with a couple pieces of skewer, and clamp the other fender onto the opposite side of the body so it's lined up about the same, and drill holes into the second fender through the same holes you made in the body with the first fender.

Then look at the body, the wheels, and the fenders, and decide how much you're going to taper them. I tend to leave the fenders a little wider than the wheels. In any case, you want to make the two fenders as symmetric as possible, and make a tapering cut from the front end to somewhere in the middle of the fender.

Once those cuts are done, finish smoothing the fenders and finish them, leaving the sides that will be glued to the body unfinished (so glue will stick). If you want to add lights, racing numbers, or other decoration to the fenders, now's the time for it. Paint or not, I try to put 3-5 coats of tung oil on, giving each thin coat a day to cure, so this is a slow part of the process.

And there's your fenders!

#toyCars #howTo #fenders

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I tend to make my car bodies pretty close to the template shown. Use whatever wood you have available for car bodies. You can either leave the wood-grain showing with a clear finish, or you can paint the body. Up to you.

I make the bodies using boards that are at least 1” thick, but no thicker than about 1.5 inches (25-40mm). This design uses thick “fenders” and I don't want the car getting too thick.

I cut the outside on my bandsaw. Using a fine-tooth ¼” blade, I can get pretty good cuts right off the saw, but I've even cut out car bodies using a ¾” resaw blade. It'll take more cleanup to get a nice surface, but that goes pretty quick with a spokeshave and sandpaper.

With the body cut out and smoothed, I will buzz the flat surfaces on the belt-sander. Then I drill the axle holes on my post-drill. A drill press will work fine if you're lazy. A hand-drill or bit and brace will work too, but if the holes aren't perpendicular to the sides of the body, the car won't roll straight, so however you drill them, try to get them straight.

There are holes in the template I showed, but I sometimes will move the axles forward or back a bit, which also means moving the alignment holes for the fenders, and probably will make the fender template useless. If you make very small (less than ¾ inch / 18mm) wheels, you'll need to move the axle hole closer to the bottom edge of the body so the wheel will reach the floor.

After the axle holes are drilled, I use forstner bits to make two holes for the “passenger compartment.” The template calls for a 20/16 (1-¼ inch or 32mm) hole and a 10/16 hole. Use what you have, and what looks good to you. With those two holes drilled, I head to the bench and cut out the waste between the holes using a coping saw, turning saw, or if you're fancy and like burning electrons, a jigsaw or scroll-saw will work, too. Smooth out the surfaces of the passenger compartment with a rasp or sandpaper. The rasp is a lot quicker.

Next, I will “show the fenders to the body” to check fit. This also lets me drill the alignment holes in the body to match any tweaks I made to the fenders. And I will lightly mark the edges of the fenders on the body, and put blue tape on most of the area that will get glued before finishing the body (though that's not shown in the pictures above).

I tend to keep any decoration on the body to the front, top and back surfaces. The sides mostly get covered by the fenders, but if you're going to add any decoration, do that now, and then finish the body with 3-5 thin coats of tung oil, buffed with 0000 steel wool between coats.

And that completes the body.

#toyCars #howTo #body

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Rear wheels, I generally make from either 4/4 or 5/4 stock, and turn them no larger than 2” (50mm) in diameter. I've turned a few with the grain running through the wheel, but then I need 2x2 inch turning blanks, which are harder to come by. I'm not convinced the increased strength is needed, but turning the wheels with the grain running parallel to the axle will also help when the wood changes size due to humidity changes, so it's probably better to do it that way.

Front wheels I make smaller in both dimensions. I make them between 2/4 and ¾ thick, and diameter around an inch (25mm).

On my lathe, I have a chuck with a block of wood with a 4” (100mm) long ⅜ bolt through the middle of it (I drilled the hole on the lathe). A washer and nut complete the “wheel chuck.” I will drill a ⅜ inch hole through a wheel blank that's roughly 3” long for a pair of rear wheels, or the same length for 4 front wheels, put it on the bolt, tighten down the nut, and turn away.

After I have the wheels “pretty close,” I will cut “treads” running around the wheel using the tip of a skew, and cut the wheels mostly apart using a parting tool (not necessarily in that order). I use a scraper to slightly round the edges of each wheel, just so a kid doesn't get cut on the sharp arris on the wheel. I will sand them to about 200 grit, and apply a few coats of shellac on the lathe. Then I pull them from the bolt and finish cutting them apart with a hand-saw. Next is a quick trip to the belt-sander to clean up the faces of the wheels, but not so much that it leaves a sharp arris on the edge of the wheel.

India ink works nicely to blacken the wheels, but you can leave them natural, as well. For a finish, I generally stick to a couple coats of tung oil, which is kid-safe and easy to renew later.

And there's your wheels.

#toyCars #howTo #axles

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In general, you'll want a diffuse-porous wood. In North America, this means one of the following woods: alder; aspen; beech; birch; hophornbeam; ironwood; live oak; madrone; mountain mahogany; maple; myrtle; or sycamore. Fruit woods, such as Apple, Cherry, or Plum will work too.

You'll also want grain as straight as you can get. Twisty grain will make life hard for you, and the axles will be weaker than you would like (which is why I generally don't use fruit woods for axles).

I've standardized on ⅜ inch (roughly 9mm) diameter for axles. It's big enough to be strong, and small enough that I'm not wasting too much wood.

First step is rough-dimensioning the wood into square sticks. I tend to make them no longer than 30” (75mm) since that's the longest I can put into my lathe.

Then I run the square sticks through my Stanley 77 dowel-maker with the ⅜ inch cutter, which is set a little oversized. It produces dowels about 13/32 inch (or 1/32 inch. oversized). If you have trouble with cutting dowels, soaking them in linseed or tung oil for a while before cutting them will make them cut more easily. Just be prepared to thoroughly clean the dowel-maker if you do this, as it will get oil everywhere and you don't want that to gum up the works when it cures.

If you soaked the blank in oil, let it sit for a couple days to cure before proceeding. If there are any spots with tear-out, try to align them to the part of the axle that will be glued into a wheel, and feel free to fill it with wood filler if it makes you feel better.

Next, I pop the rough dowel into a ⅜ inch collet-chuck on my lathe, and smooth the rough dowel with some 60 grit sandpaper, just lightly so I don't give myself any splinters. This also makes the dowel fit tightly into a hole drilled by my ⅜ inch drill bit. The dowel is either dead-on ⅜ inch at this point, or maybe 1/64 oversized.

With the dowel smoothed, I cut axles to length (see more in the Assembly section), and wrap the width of the wheel on each end of the axle with blue painters tape.

I then chuck the axle up in the collet and sand the center portion down by about 1/32, making it undersized and smooth. I work through 120, 220, and 400 grits, and then apply a small amount of paste-wax to the portion of the axle without the painters tape. The paste-wax will serve as a lubricant to keep the axle turning smoothly in the body.

And there you are, a completed axle that will work well in a toy car.

#toyCars #howTo #axles

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I recently finished this cholla and resin knife. The story of how it came to be is below the fold.

After pouring some resin to make cholla pen blanks, I had some prepared cholla left over, and made a mold from a couple chunks of tubafor to cast a handle. Once that had cured, I rough-turned it on the lathe to get it more or less handle-shaped.

Since the tang of the knife blade I was planning to use is a somewhat complex shape, I simplified it to a series of steps. The widest portion was a 7/16 inch hole, then a narrower portion with a 5/16 hole, then the smallest portion with a ⅛ inch hole. But because I don’t want an unsupported drill-bit going down the middle of a hole possibly getting misaligned, I started with the smallest, and drilled the ⅛ inch hole roughly five inches deep (I have a 6 inch long drill bit for just this sort of task), then drilled a short ¼ inch hole for the wider bit of the tang, followed by the 5/16 inch hole for all but the last inch, which was drilled with the 7/16 inch hole.

When I was done with that, the blade could drop into the hole in the center of the handle, and was relatively supported most of its length. Knowing that the most stress would be at the end of the handle where the knife enters it, I planned on putting on a ferrule or bolster, using some brass tubing I have on hand. I turned the end of the knife handle down until that just fit.

Next was an insert. I have some small pieces of brass that a friend milled holes into which slip over the tang of these knife blanks, so I prepared one of those to fit inside the round tubing. Once everything fit correctly, I placed the ferrule on the tang of the blade, poured epoxy into the hole in the handle, and carefully slid the knife blade in place. A bit of epoxy oozed out, but I was using slow-setting epoxy, so I had plenty of time to wipe it up.

Once the epoxy cured, I removed the blade and handle from the lathe chuck and started to shape it into a handle using spokeshaves, rasps, files, and a carving knife.

I continued shaping the handle, using finer tools, then sanded it using 60, 120, 220, and then 400 grit sandpaper. I applied the first coat of finishing oil, let it cure, and evaluated my work.

I needed to make a few minor tweaks to the shape to make it comfortable in my hand, so I made those, and then began finishing the handle.

In all, I think I used 7 or 8 coats of finishing oil, rubbing the handle with 0000 steel wool before each coat to smooth out any imperfections.

I started preparing the sheath at this point, first making an insert from pine to protect the sheath from the knife. This is a traditional Scandinavian way of making a knife sheath, and I think it gives me a good result.

Next up is shaping the leather to the knife. I do this by soaking the leather in water, and then wrapping it around the knife and insert and letting it dry while clamped in place. The leather will take the shape of the knife, and marks from the clamps give me a good guide for where to punch the holes for the stitching.

Once the leather dried, I cut holes for a belt-loop, dyed the leather yellow, then punched holes for the stitches and stitched it up with red thread.

Once stitched, I trimmed the leather down to the final dimensions, then chamfered and burnished the edges, re-dyed any spots I had missed, and applied a coat of Resolene®︎ to protect the leather. Done.

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So… a week and an half ago, just getting over the flu I’d had for two weeks, I decided I needed a second wooden spatula in the kitchen. So I made one from cherry. And broke it when I put in the inlay of ash which was just a hair too big.

The cherry spatula is 3 inches wide. The maple ones are 3½ inches wide. The blades vary in length from 3 to 4 inches.

Then I made five more from maple because I figured I could do better. I had planned to get four from a 12/4 x 7 inch x 20 inch chunk of maple, but after cutting the first two out, I realized I could get three from the thickness I had. And if the board were 9 inches wide, I could probably get nine blanks from a 20-22” long piece. But anyway.

Roughed them all out on the bandsaw, changing blades way too often. Had a ¾” 2/3 tpi hook blade for ripping / resawing out each spatula shaped piece from the 12/4 board, then a ¼” 16 tpi blade for cutting out the shape.

From there, the blanks went into the carving vise, and I dialed in the shape with spokeshaves. I used the large and small HNT Gordon shaves, as they both have tight enough mouths that I can work the “wrong way” on the grain and still not get bad tear-out.

On a few of the spats, I used the belt sander to flatten the back of the blade, but generally I did that with the large shave. I think the two with the worst blades were ones I cut with the tension too low on the resaw blade.

Carving was mostly done with a 45°︎ V tool palm-gouge. I think it’s 3mm wide. I also used a #3x6mm and a #2x12mm on the blue and yellow spat. The plum painted ones just got lines carved with the v-tool and then I made some thin plum milk-paint and painted it into the lines.

#woodworking #batchProduction

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The bowl was made from a crotch in a juniper tree with a large bark inclusion where the branch and trunk had partially grown together. Wacky grain, multiple different bits of heartwood, and all the sorts of things that make for a pretty result if you can keep the bowl from exploding on the lathe.

Finish was a few coats of Tried and True Varnish Oil, followed by Birchwood Casey TruOil gunstock finish which I used when the 24-hour wait for the T&T to cure felt like it was going to take forever.

I really like working with flawed wood like this and seeing what I can do with the wood and resin, but it was almost a month in progress, which feels like FOREVER when people keep asking, “is it done yet?”

Got the wall thickness down around ¼ inch (6 mm), but any thinner would have meant waiting even longer for the epoxy to cure and a hidden crack in the bottom of the bowl probably would’ve let go if I’d kept turning.

#bowl #woodTurning #resin #juniper

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This is a vase I turned from a chunk of Bradford Pear. I wanted to try a round-bottomed vase, without thinking about how I would hold it upright once it had something in it.

Turning the vase went pretty well. And once I had it turned I had the idea of having a sort of halo holding up the vase. Then, thinking about how I'd hold the halo, I came up with the current design, using some sticks through a halo, cradling the vase.

So I got busy and mounted a hexagon of live oak on a sacrificial face plate, and turned a wooden donut on the lathe.

Then I drilled holes for the legs, and used the offcuts to make three live-oak legs, which I painted black and finished, then glued into the wooden donut, then finished that with some spray-lacquer.

I placed the base against the vase and pencil-marked where the legs hit. I drilled shallow holes with a spoon bit and slightly rounded the tops of the legs to match. Not a perfect match, but close enough.

I then finished the vase with some carving, some enamel paint, and multiple coats of spray lacquer. It's slightly more matte than I was hoping, but I think overall it's good.

Once everything was finished, I poured some black-tinted epoxy into the inside of the vase to make it waterproof. I really need to get an old bbq rotisserie motor one of these years so I don't have to hand-rotate a piece to get an even coating on the inside of it, but for this one, it was hand-work. Then a little more 5-minute epoxy to hold the legs and the bottom of the vase together and it was complete.

#woodworking #vase #legs #woodturning #art

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