Customer Reviews

Making Heirloom Toys

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I used this book to make a little dump truck, a jet plane, and a tugboat, soon to be given to my grandson. I did not find the fact that not all plans were full-sized a problem This is common and the %enlargement (if needed) is given The instructions were clear. (However, if you are making the little truck, check the width of 2" hinges available before gluing down the hinge block!) The designs are classic, and range from simple (the ones I made) to complex (the truck on the cover is said to take 40 hours.) There are a couple of educational toys included.

Many of the toys' parts are made out of fine woods, but you can substitute available wood in most cases. Makowicki is concerned with toy safety, e.g., the crane uses a magnet to lift barrels, not a hook, and he specifies child-safe finishes - references in appendix. He also gives many ideas for jigs for cutting angles on the table saw. (If you aren't going to produce for sale, in many cases you can use a band saw with a narrow blade or a scroll saw and sand smooth, instead of making the jig.)

I made the toys while taking a shop course, so I learned the safe way to operate power tools at the same time.

I also purchased Tarjany's "30 Toy Vehicles Made from Wood". It has cruder designs, but look there for semis, flatbeds, bulldozers, etc. (I made the long-hood semi with a gravel trailer.) His airplanes suffer by comparison with Makowicki's.

I am going to purchase Makowicki's "Marvelous Transforming Toys" next.

The book provides scale drawings of several projects. But in order to use them you first have to photocopy the plans at the appropriate (and provided) zoom level. This was difficult, especially since the paper size needed to be larger than standard copier sizes. In order to save pages, it seemed as if many steps were eliminated from the cutting and assembly instructions.

I made the dump truck and airplane for my 2yr old nephew. They're his favorite toys and he plays with them all the time.