AES
Established Member
A friend of ours has a young son just coming up to his 1st birthday and a short article in a recent edition of the US "Scroll Saw Woodworking & Crafts" mag seemed worth a try - and a lot less complicated than some of the small lettering I've been trying recently.
The cutting out was fine on the Excali (1 inch plus old pine shelves) and the tilting head on the Excali was especially useful for cutting the bevels on the wheels.
My wife decided to use the colour scheme from the recent Disney film about a parrot fish called "Nemo", and here's the result:
The colours and varnish top coats are all child-safe (he's teething right now), and as we were trying to more or less get the idea of a natural living creature, my wife used mixed artists acrylic colours without rubbing down between each of the 3 coats, and with no masking for the straight lines. I'm not sure we've quite achieved the desired irregular scaly effect, but the only real "problem" was in mixing the main orange body colour - my wife used about 1 part of red to 3 parts bright yellow, and it looked fine when it was wet. But as you can see, as the colour dried it got darker and darker and now looks pretty much back at the red it started off with.
Never mind, I don't think it will affect the little boy's pleasure in playing with it.
The wheels are deliberately set off-centre on the axles. That creates the swimming/wobbling motion between the 2 body parts and the tail as it's pulled along.
If I made this again I'd probably use something like model aircraft control surface hinges to join the 3 separate body parts closer together (rather than the hooks & eyes specified); and maybe I'd slightly reduce the off-centre dimension of the wheels on the axles (to smooth out the wiggling action a bit).
This is clearly NOT the sort of high class work than I normally see here, and I certainly don't expect plaudits. But I thought members might be interested to see a really crude and simple child's toy for a change.
AES
The cutting out was fine on the Excali (1 inch plus old pine shelves) and the tilting head on the Excali was especially useful for cutting the bevels on the wheels.
My wife decided to use the colour scheme from the recent Disney film about a parrot fish called "Nemo", and here's the result:
The colours and varnish top coats are all child-safe (he's teething right now), and as we were trying to more or less get the idea of a natural living creature, my wife used mixed artists acrylic colours without rubbing down between each of the 3 coats, and with no masking for the straight lines. I'm not sure we've quite achieved the desired irregular scaly effect, but the only real "problem" was in mixing the main orange body colour - my wife used about 1 part of red to 3 parts bright yellow, and it looked fine when it was wet. But as you can see, as the colour dried it got darker and darker and now looks pretty much back at the red it started off with.
Never mind, I don't think it will affect the little boy's pleasure in playing with it.
The wheels are deliberately set off-centre on the axles. That creates the swimming/wobbling motion between the 2 body parts and the tail as it's pulled along.
If I made this again I'd probably use something like model aircraft control surface hinges to join the 3 separate body parts closer together (rather than the hooks & eyes specified); and maybe I'd slightly reduce the off-centre dimension of the wheels on the axles (to smooth out the wiggling action a bit).
This is clearly NOT the sort of high class work than I normally see here, and I certainly don't expect plaudits. But I thought members might be interested to see a really crude and simple child's toy for a change.
AES
