New Etsy Shop Listing - Handmade Wooden Toy Car - Bat Car from the Play Pal Series - MDF - Green

Handmade Wooden Toy Car - Bat Car from the Play Pal Series - MDF - Green

 

Experimenting with acrylic paints and MDF on this one. Brush painted with acrylic house paint. Oops paint from Home Depot. No primer, no sealer, just several coats of paint sanding between coats until I was happy with how smooth the surface was.

Flat paint is easier to apply, and it covers better. At least that is the way it seems to me. When I am using acrylic paints, I have to relearn how to paint with it when the color changes.

Free Plans For Bad Bob's Custom Motors Wooden Toy Cars

John Lewman over at ToyMakingPlans.com created these plans for me and released them in the forum. If you are not a member and you are interested in toymaking you should join the fun. My grandson loves these wooden toys.

Bad Bob's Custom Motors Wooden Toy Cars Green & Yellow

Bad Bob's Custom Motors Wooden Toy Cars Yellow

In the Shop - Blue & White Bad Bob's Custom Motors Coupe

Handmade Wooden Toy Car - Bad Bob's Custom Motors - Blue & White

Just out of the clamps. Painting with contrasting colors looks really good but, is tricky to pull off. You have to paint the parts separately masking off the spots where the glue will go.

Handmade Wooden Toy Car - Bad Bob's Custom Motors - Blue & White

Fitting all the parts together after they are painted is quite tedious. There is a risk of damaging the finish with tools or glues.  Being wood, fitment is not precise some parts need to be carefully modified to fit without damaging the paint.

Handmade Wooden Toy Car - Bad Bob's Custom Motors - Blue & White

 If you look closely at the photo above, you can see one tiny spot just above the fender where the paint was scratched off during assembly.

Handmade Wooden Toy Car - Bad Bob's Custom Motors - Blue & White

I learned the hard way that you must clean the jaws of your clamps before clamping painted parts together and be very careful not to touch the toy car with any of the metal parts of the clamps.

Small Quick clamps work well for this sort of clamping, The jaws are easy to clean and padded well. I've not had these stick to anything yet.

What kind of paint are you using for your Bad Bob's Custom Motors cars?

Bad Bob's Custom Motors

I use a variety of paints from various sources. I like the acrylic house paints the best. All of the paints are nontoxic when cured.

 I like to use a white primer to seal the wood and make the colors pop. In this case, I am using Zinsser B-I-N shellac based primer.

 I prefer to use an airbrush for painting toys but, I have to paint outdoors, and the weather where I live does not cooperate, and I have to wait or use a brush. I used an airbrush for these wooden toy cars. My airbrush is a Badger Anthem 155.

 I prefer acrylics over all other paints. They clean up easily, cover well, and are readily available in a vast array of colors. To clean, I flood with water to get rid of the bulk of the paint. The remaining paint is easily removed with ammonia-based cleaners such as window cleaner. I use household$ ammonia to remove dried paint.

 I used the following to paint these wooden toy car bodies.

Pink - Behr Acrylic House Paint
Green - Apple Barrel Gloss Green Acrylic Craft Paint
Blue - Behr Acrylic House Paint - Oops Paint
Yellow - Createx - Airbrush Paint
Red - Apple Barrel Bright Fed Acrylic Craft Paint
Lavender - Behr Acrylic House Paint - Oops Paint
Primer - Zinsser B-I-N

New Etsy Listing - Handmade Wooden Toy Car, Hot Rod 1927 T-Bucket From the Hot Rod Freaky Ford Series

Handmade Wooden Toy Car, Hot Rod 1927 T-Bucket From the Hot Rod Freaky Ford Series Pink

This one had a small problem. The hole for the peg doll wasn't drilled deep enough. I carefully set up my drill press and bit to extend the depth of the hole and added about 1/4-inch. The result was not what I was expecting. Either the bit was too small, or something was misaligned. The peg doll got stuck in the hole when I tested it. After trying several different tools sanding, I finally wound up using a diamond burr mounted in a rotary tool to enlarge the hole.