Devon's first birthday is coming up and we decided I should build him a wooden toy. This is the first car of several that will make up a train. He'll get a couple cars a year that will do age appropriate things. This is the engine, it just looks pretty and rolls around - very age appropriate :-) Images are in reverse chronological order for the time being... I'll fix that later. For now you can see a few of the steps involved with making his little toy train. I'll post more as I make more progress.
The engine will be made of birch and ash, with purpleheart accents. Mom picks the accent wood, Dad builds the train.
The finished dowel. The tape prevents the birch from splitting out as the chop saw cuts through it. A new blade would help too - one thing at a time.
My first project for my plane. The flat is to provide a spot to glue the boiler to the frame.
Gluing the Boiler to the frame. This was really tricky to set up, the whole assembly came crashing off the table at one point. Grrrr.
All the stacks, headlight, etc glued into the boiler. If you zoom in you can make out the cab layout marks on the piece of purpleheart in the foreground.
After drilling out the corners of the cab windows I used a coping saw and a file to finish it off.
