Topics

76

Toy Makers / Toy design portfolio - "open source"

« on: August 01, 2013, 08:23:50 pm »

This is a follow up to the previous Toy Plans posting.

We've been creating portrait patterns by request for a while. There are usually very good reasons to ask for the pattern - marriage, anniversary, retirement, an injury, a death, etc.

Someone noted that toy patterns are expensive. I agree and also think they are overly complicated. I suggest we try something like the portrait patterns but for toys. If someone has a good idea for a toy and will post a request for a design, or create their own design to share with the community, we could build a portfolio of unique toy plans that are shared freely. There might be great reasons (charities, new grandkids, etc.) but in this case the idea for a toy will be reason enough.

To kick it off, I remember as a kid having a wooden workbench with holes, a mallet, and a bunch of dowels that you could pound into the holes; we played with it for hours at a time. I request any patterns for toy wooden tools, workbench, and toolbox. There might be pliers, hammer, saw, screwdriver, wrench, whatever a little guy or girl would like to use to play workshop (without hurting themselves). A workbench that held the tools and/or a toolbox would also be great. No need to be complicated - simpler is better. We'll leave the professional designers to make the complex designs. 

Those interested, please feel free to jump in. Those others, please keep your wet blankets to yourself.





   

77

Tutorials, Techniques and Tips / Surprise wood find

« on: July 28, 2013, 09:11:20 am »

This "brick" of cedar wood was at the local flee market. They had a pallet piled high with them. They sell for $3.75 and have 100 pieces that are 3" x 7.25" and slightly under 3/16 thick.


Has anyone used these for scrolling? They seem to be aromatic cedar, clear grain, nice dry blanks. A little small, but just the thing for some projects. Any thoughts?

78

Brag Forum / Watercolor in oval frame with intarsia cattails

« on: July 27, 2013, 07:28:18 pm »

This is a watercolor I did from a photo taken by my beautiful bride.


The frame is a red oak ellipse 15"Hx21"W outside, with a 2"wide border. Routed 1/2" rabbit on the back for the painting and glass, and 3/8" roundover on the front edges. There are maple splines (8" long, 1/8" thick, 1.5" deep) through the right and left edges where the oak is joined.
The cattails are a simplified version of Bruce Worthington's "Dragonfly on a Cattail", reduced to 10" tall and w/o the dragonfly (maybe I'll add one later, on the other side of the frame). Intarsia is 1/4" BB Ply backer, Poplar leaves, Black Walnut cattails. The points on the cattails are the BB Ply backer. We couldn't agree on whether the cattails should be vertical or leaning to one side, so they are pinned to the frame with a 1/4" dowel at the base, left unglued. We can change the angle, or remove the cattails if needed for packing.

79

Toy Makers / Simple trucks

« on: July 24, 2013, 11:47:06 am »

These trucks are simple cuts from 1.5 x 2" lumber and use 1.5" diameter Hobby Lobby wheels (19 wheels for $3.99). You can use a pine 2x4 if you like, but the photo shows a pickup and a van cut from 3/4" thick red oak that was ripped to 2" then glued to 1.5 x 2.

The pickup bed is a compound cut made from the piece that was cut out of the blank when cutting the cab and chassis.

Axles are 1/4" oak dowels. Drill the axle holes 9/32" before cutting the shape. I used Feed-n-wax on the axles before gluing the wheels on. They seem to roll very well - they beat a Hot Wheels car for roll distance on a ramp test. Not too scientific, but pretty fun.   

80

General Scroll Saw Talk / Making Fun

« on: July 23, 2013, 02:03:06 pm »

I've been retooling my scroll shop lately to make more toys. Portraits and plaques can be impressive, but the look people have when they see a slick hand made toy is altogether different. Rolling, flopping, squeaking, flying, spinning toys are a lot more fun than fretwork and they force you to interact with the wood.

But in our Toys forum, the last thread was started back in March.

Am I missing something? Is there a reason this forum is so barren? Are the designers of toys are more protective with their intellectual property, or is there just less interest in that space? 

Anyone have any thoughts on it?   

81

Tutorials, Techniques and Tips / Custom portrait frame

« on: July 18, 2013, 04:21:34 pm »

I was asked for some details on how I made a picture frame so I put this PDF together. I'd be happy to hear any suggestions for improving the process.

http://www.rmhayes.us/resources/Making+a+custom+frame.pdf

BTW - Here's the microwaved Model A in that frame...


Thanks for looking.

82

Brag Forum / New Portrait

« on: July 16, 2013, 04:24:04 pm »

This is a portrait of my brother in law. Chris was killed in Vietnam in 1968. He was a graduate of the NYCCC School of Commercial Art and a working commercial artist before he volunteered for army service. Artist, athlete, and poet. Some gave all.

8"x10" on 1/4" BB Ply with a black felt backer, in a hand-made black walnut frame.

83

Brag Forum / Samurai

« on: July 16, 2013, 04:08:24 pm »

This is Mahendra's Samurai. It is on 8"x10" 1/4" BB Ply with a black walnut stand.

If you cut this pattern, you might want to add a bridge or two to the bottom end of his robes - this is barely hanging on by a small piece on the left end.


Thanks to Mahendra for a nice looking pattern.

84

General Scroll Saw Talk / Vertical cut in thick hard wood - any suggestions?

« on: July 07, 2013, 10:24:44 am »

I am cutting some toy cars. The body (see pattern below) is cut in one piece from a piece of 2"x2" red oak using a #5 blade on an EX-21 saw with the blade set perpendicular to the table. The upper arm position has been verified parallel with the table. The wood is actually an oak 1x4 ripped to two 1x2 then glued to a 2 x 1.625 with Gorilla wood glue.

The car shapes are all smooth curves. After cutting the outside shape or internal openings, the part will not come out of the blank in either direction until I cut around it to make some clearance. Looking at the final cut, the top and bottom surfaces of the cut look to be in line, but the center is bowed slightly, preventing the part from leaving the blank. This is not only in curved section, but also in long straight cuts such as the frame section under the pickup bed.

Any suggestions? There doesn't seem to be a way to tighten the blade on the EX-21, but if someone has a way, I'd like to know.

85

General Scroll Saw Talk / Painting wood toys

« on: July 01, 2013, 11:49:47 am »

I made some wooden cars and trucks from pine and oak. The oak with some Feed-n-wax (top) look great but the pine is kind of plain. I tried painting the pine using Krylon Color Creations Acrylic Latex Enamel. The results are lousy. I tried Krylon primer first - the primer went on smooth and looked good - but the paint on top is streaky, even after 3 coats, and is still tacky after 24 hours. I tried both bristle and foam brushes. Very disappointing.

Can anyone suggest a better approach to getting shiny paint on a pine truck?   

86

Tutorials, Techniques and Tips / Resizing the rendering

« on: June 30, 2013, 09:22:31 am »

When converting a photo to a pattern we use GIMP to remove background, highlight features, and Filter/Artistic/Photocopy. Then save and load into Inkscape to Path/Trace Bitmap. This makes a nice SVG (scalable vector graphic) version of the image. The SVG can be resized at this point in Inkscape and will retain the smoothness of the image. So this is the best place to set the size of the image (before returning to GIMP - if you increase the size in GIMP you will see the jaggies showing up).

The top toolbar in Inkscape has X, Y, W, lock, H. If you close the lock then the W/H proportions will be maintained. Set W to your desired width (if you are making an 8"Wx10"H portrait, maybe set W to 7" to keep some border in your cutting). BUT now you SVG spills outside the boundaries of the Inkscape page. If you save it then load into GIMP, you'll only see the part of the SVG within the page boundaries.

To fix the Inkscape boundaries, go to File/Document Properties and click on the '+' next to "Resize Page to Content". The window expands, and at the bottom is a button "Resize page to drawing or selection". This will expand or contract the Inkscape page boundaries so they just surround your SVG.   Then save the SVG and open in GIMP to edit for floaters and add bridges. I usually save the final version as a GIF rather than jpg (it's smaller and it flags it as the pattern).

 

87

General Scroll Saw Talk / BB Ply

« on: June 29, 2013, 12:41:22 am »

I was in Menard's this week in the plywood aisle. Up on a top rack they had a sign for 1/4" Baltic Birch Plywood, with a description like it was the real thing. It was a 4'x8' sheet selling for $19.

Does anyone know if this is really BB Ply or if they just used the name? I understood all BB Ply was in 5'x5' sheets, but maybe Manards is big enough to get it made full sized.

88

Brag Forum / Save the Date

« on: June 22, 2013, 04:34:33 pm »

A local girl sent out this Save The Date for a wedding this summer (details are blocked out). This portrait is 5"x7" and in a Walmart $3 frame - not their wedding gift, just a memento of the day. Cut in 1/8" BB Ply in a stack of 3 and backed with black felt from Hobby Lobby. One for the bride, one for her mother, and one for my archive. Comments welcome.

  

89

Ask Steve a question. / Sawdust safety

« on: June 22, 2013, 02:29:03 pm »

I have been sanding and cutting quite a bit this year, and recently developed some rib cage pain. My MD took an xray and the radiologist thought he saw emphysema.  I've never been a smoker so I think he probably saw some irritation due to woodworking.

Can anyone comment on any toxicity in the dust, or any other experience similar to this? I do a little exotic, but mostly work with domestic hardwood (walnut, cherry, birch, oak, maple).

I will be ordering a dust collector. I've seen good reviews on this site for the Harbor Freight collectors. Any recommendation on the size needed for a small shop? Only one tool active at a time. Would the 1 HP model http://www.harborfreight.com/13-gallon-industrial-portable-dust-collector-31810.html be sufficient, or do I need to consider the 2 HP model http://www.harborfreight.com/2-hp-industrial-5-micron-dust-collector-97869.html?

Thanks for any responses.

90

Ask Steve a question. / Polling

« on: June 18, 2013, 09:00:47 am »

Steve - I found this posting from 2011:
http://stevedgood.com/community/index.php?topic=5084.0
asking about creating a poll that members can respond to. You stated that the feature was turned off because of bugs.

Have those been resolved? Is this feature available today?