Odin's Toy Factory

Top Right Front -  Wooden Toy Car - Hot Rod Freaky Ford - 27 Coupe - Pine - Amber Shellac - Metallic Purple Hubs I made a bunch of Hot Rods primarily to build something simple that I could learn to do finishing and painting. Until last year I had not made any painted or finished toys. It was a major learning curve for me. I was trained and worked for awhile as an professional auto painter but this was very different.  All of the paints and tools were different. One of the biggest things I had to do was learn how to apply finishes in a place where very high humidity was the norm. Where I live in the Florida pan handle the humidity generally starts at 99% in the early morning and doesn't get low enough to paint until some time in the afternoon. In the summer there is blistering heat in the afternoons. In by yard this summer the heat index got up to 116 degrees. You can't paint in this kind of heat either. This is especially true for spray painting wooden toys. Wate...

I did a lot of testing photography testing on this one I must have deleted 50 photos that I didn't like before I finally settled on some I liked well enough to use for the shop. On the internet especially handmade items. Vintage and collectors items also need really good photos. The buyer cant see it, pick it up, feel it, smell it or interact with it in any way other than your photos. I do my best to make quality toys and I want prospective buyers to see that when the look at my photos. If a picture is worth 1000 words the the ten photos that Etsy lets you put in your listing are worth 10,000 words. I can't put that many words into the description. Photos are also what gets buyers into your shop. 80-90% of my views come from Pinterest and other places I have posted photos. I find it amazing that i can easily find items for sell on EBay that have terrible photos. I've seen terrible photos that were dark blurry and out of focus in listings that were trying to sell a Nikon...

This is the best one of this series I have made so far. There are few things that could be improved on using the materials I had available. If you look close you can see a few spots where there is some tear out that could not be fixed without sanding away enough of the wood to change the look of the car. Working with pine 2x4s  is a mixed blessing. They are dirt cheap but are really hard to work with. I've thrown away more than a few bodies because the tear out was so bad that the toy part wasn't useable. On the front there is a spot where some shellac dripped. I did not see this until I was processing the photos. It could have been fixed but it's to late now. There are a few places that could be a little smoother. Again these were not visible to me until the photos were done. I'm not sure I would have done anything to improve them. To produce a glassy smooth surface on the pine I'm using would require an enormous amount of work. If you want to see all you def...

20171010-120840 Wooden Toy Car - Hot Rod Freaky Ford - 27 T Coupe - Pine - Amber Shellac - Black Hubs I have/had a dilemma with this one. What do I do if the toy gets damaged during the build process? I have a basic rule I try to live by: If it gets broken its trash. If it is a part I can make another one. If its early in the build it is annoying but not but still its not to difficult to start over. Not so with this one. So here is the the story. I dropped it. Not early in the process but when it was 99% complete. If you have made painted wooden toys before you know is a lot of work. At least twice as much work as making unfinished wooden toys. It can be 5 or even 10 times more work depending on how complicated the toy you making is. At this point in the build it was very hard for me to just toss it in the trash. First I tried to fix the toy car. I soon discovered that repairing a shellac finish on a toy that was already assembled and painted without damaging other parts ...

Nosy the Dragon an unfinished free standing wooden toy puzzle cut from 1.5 inch thick southern yellow pine. Height = 7.5 inches Legenth = 6 inches Thickness = 1.5 inches I cut this version of Nosy the Dragonfrom a piece of southern yellow pine 2x12 I had left over from a Toddler Rocking Pony I made for my grandson Odin. I think southern yellow pine is difficult to cut. The combination of very hard and very soft grain mens you have to cut slow and careful with sharp blades to get acceptable cuts. I used two blades on this one and probably should have used three. I cut this with a #5 skip tooth blade. I could have used a larger blade and cut it faster but I have sanding these and and cutting slow with a fine blade can save a lot of sanding. Also when using a fast cutting blade when something goes wrong it goes wrong really fast. You can ruin a piece in a big hurry. Even before it was sanded the pieces worked well. To test the puzzle pieces for proper fit and squareness I slide ...