Toy Makers Shop - What Kind Of Primer Do You Use For Toys?

I have tried many kinds of primer and nothing works as well as a shellac based primer.  Zinsser B-I-N It seals the wood so nothing bleeds through and you clean up with alcohol. No super toxic fumes. It sprays and brushes well. I reapply the primer and sand until it feels smooth.
 
For lighter colors, yellow for example, you need to use a white base coat or primer. Zinsser B-I-N primer bright white. Ot makes the xolors pop. All of the white parts on this car are Zinsser B-I-N primer with a clear coat on top. Note how the white background of my photo tent looks grey by comparison.

20141213-165701 Handmade Wooden Toy Car Bad Bob's Custom Motors Coupe Blue & White 653434064

The primer needs to be sandable. You may need to try some primers.  The first primer I tried didn't sand well at all. Shellac isn't the most sandable finish around. If it gets to hot it can melt and gum up your sandpaper. This means hand sanding with light pressure only. 

There are many other primers available, but none of them work as well for me as Zinsser B-I-N. All of my sanding after the first coat of primer goes on is done by hand. Not being able to use a power sander is not a big deal.

Do you drill axle holes before or after painting?

Drilling Hook Clearance  For A Handmade Wooden Tow Truck 

I usually like to drill before I cut the pattern on my scroll saw, but there are plenty of exceptions.

I can while the wood is square and easy to handle. The hole in the photo would be nearly impossible to drill after the truck body had been cut.

If I cut before drilling, I find that holes near the edge can tear out easily. Such tear out is not easily repairable and the toy ruined.

When using axle pegs, I drill first and ream the holes to exact size with a drill after I'm finished painting. This clears the holes of paint and removes any swelling in the wood cause from using water-based acrylic paint. Sometimes the paint will get chipped around the holes but since they are behind the wheels where you can't see. It's not a big deal. For regular axles that go all the way through it doesn't matter much since the hole are a good bit larger than the axle.

For lighter toys, I use dowels for handles.  I insert dowels into the axle holes to provide a grip to use while painting. If I drilled after painting, I would need to develop a new painting technique.

I sometimes make toys that are drilled to accept peg dolls. I usually drill these after they are painted. I find that they are difficult to get straight if I drill them before the car is assembled. I find painting inside the holes to cause swelling of the wood that will sometimes cause the peg dolls to fit tight. Besides, I like the way it looks with the raw wood exposed in the hole. I use tape such as painters tape to help keep the paint from chipping. Go slow and careful with a sharp bit and you with get a clean, sharp edge.

For regular axles that go all the way through it doesn't matter much since the hole are a good bit larger than the axle.

Witch On A Broom - Not Just For Halloween

I'm writing this in March 2019. I just sold another witch on a broom. Either they are getting used for something else, or some folks celebrate Halloween all year round.

I originally made these for toys for my Grandson who loves anything to do with Halloween. To him they are toys. He builds castles and haunted houses out of blocks for them.

The witches are part of a set of pieces all having to do with Halloween. Skulls, skeletons, cats, jack-o-lanterns, bats, and spiders. Some local friends saw them and wanted their own set. I made enough for my Etsy store, and the witches have become some of my best sellers.

Handmade Wooden Witch Cutout/Toy

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Here There Be Dragons - Clamping & Glueing Handmade Toy Dragon

I have just started making dragons. They are pretty simple to assemble, but gluing and clamping can be a challenge. You need to get the legs lined up correctly so the toy dragon will stand like they should. The parts always want to move around.

Handmade Wooden Toy Baby Dragon in the Clamps

Handmade Wooden Toy Baby Dragon Completed

I use Titebond No-Run, No-Drip Wood Glue for this. This glue dries clear, sets up fast, and doesn't seem to move around asmuch.

Titebond No-Run, No-Drip Wood Glue

I prefer to use my Dewalt DWHT83191 4-1/2" Small Trigger Clamps for clamping. They deliver more than enough pressure and the one hand operation eases clamping.

Dewalt DWHT83191 4-1/2" Small Trigger Clamp

Spring clamps are fast but difficult to get aligned and the pressure isn't adjustable.

Dewalt DWHT83191 4-1/2" Small Trigger Clamp

I have some small F-Clamps but these almost require three hands. I'm not a big fan of these clamps they are the right size for many job but they will slip. I have had new ones that would not hold. Bessy has replaced some of them but it is a huge pain to get them to do it. If you buy these look them over closely and test them by clamping something tight. Wiggle them around to see if they come loose. In many cases they will not clamp at all.

Bessey 4x2-inch Bar Clamp LM2-004

I also have some Irwin Quick-Grip Micro Bar Clamps. These have prroved to be to light to provide the proper pressure needed to squeeze the glue joints down tight. They are good for other things but not for clamping legs on dragons.

Irwin Quick-Grip Micro Bar Clamp

Replacing My Harbor Freight Bench Top Drill Press With A Grizzly G7943 Drill Press (Update)

I have done all the repairs and modifications and used the drill press for a while on several small projects. I'm going to call this a success.

Replacement South Bend Chuck on MY Grizzly Drill Press

The chuck worked just as I had expected. It works with bits smaller than the spec sheet indicates and is much better than the chuck that came with it. So much better than I'm considering buying a larger version for my large drill press.

I got exactly what I wanted. A good drill press that would handle smaller bits. I use drill bits down to wire gauge sizes that neither my Shopsmith or larger drill press can handle. For production purposes, I didn't want to have to fool around with adapters or changing chucks.

Some of the knobs were damaged, and I replaced them with these red ball knobs I found on Amazon. They came 10 to a bag, but they cost only $7.95. I had forgotten how much better I like ball knobs on a drill press. I plan to add these to some of my other tools. The broken knobs these replaced were also plastic.

20190310_133145 Red Ball Knob Grizzly Drill Press Replacement

I also replaced this knob with a knob I bought from Amazon when I tried to lock the spindle the knob disintegrated in my hand. It was just a bot with a knob molded on to it. I could have got by without it. The knob was cheap and I got a better knob.

Grizzly Drill Press Locking Knob Replacement

The old chuck was still good, so I stuck it on the side of the drill press with a hard drive magnet. Hard drive magnets can hold a crazy amount of weight so there is little chance it will ever come off.

Grizzly Chuck Held With A Hard Drive Magnet

I also repaired the mounting bracket for the add-on light that was about to fall off. Replaced all the incandescent bulbs with daylight GE Bright Stick LEDs. I hade to pull out the internal socket and remove about 1/8-inch so the Bright Stick LED would go in far enough into the socket. To get to this, You need to remove the top of the drill press. My puller was just large enough to do the job.

The drill press worked great for my purposes and was well worth the effort. 

Converting Bitmap Patterns to Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)

I'm not an expert with either of the software packages discussed here. Once I know what I want to do I ask the Google oracle for help and it always provides. If you have questions, you should ask Google. There are a lot of videos on YouTube, and some books are available. The learning curve is steep. If you are only going to make one toy and don't intend to make batches or modify the patterns, it may not be worth the effort to learn about these tools.

This isn't a tutorial. It is a simple explanation of how I use Gimp and Inkscape in my toymaking.

The first step I take when making something for the first time is to convert the patterns to SVG. I load the bit map patterns into Gimp and clean them up. The bitmaps get copied into Inkscape and converted into the SVG format.

Why?

First I get sharp, precise lines when you print the patterns. When you print from bitmaps the edges of the lines are jagged and fuzzy. If you want to enlarge the pattern, it gets worse. With the SVG format, the rough edges disappear.

I can enlarge them or shrink them to the size I need with no loss of detail.

I can change the color of the pattern. Some people like to use red lines to help distinguish the blade from the line.

I can get rid of the junk that I don't need like shading, colors, grain lines and text that get in the way and sometimes confuse things or make it hard to see the pattern when I am cutting. They also waste toner.

Want to fill the page with patterns? I have made pages of Play Pals and animal cutouts that I print and get whole pages full of patterns. Perhaps 20 on a page.

One of the things I have been experimenting with is fitting the patterns to the size of the wood I have in Inkscape. I paste and arrange the patterns to fit the wood I am using and print — no more struggling with organizing patterns on my wood with glue on them.

Efficient use of what would be waste is much easier. For example, when I am making my dragon puzzles, two large corner areas are just big enough for a small car or animal cut out. In Inkscape, I paste the patterns into these corners. When I'm done cutting that piece of wood, I have a puzzle and two small toys.

Do you want thicker lines so you can see them better? Not a problem.  The same is true for wanting finer lines. I'm not too good at this yet, but I'm working on it.

An issue I have not confronted yet but plan to in the future is resizing patterns where the parts need to fit each other precisely. A simple example of this would be a puzzle where you want to make the parts from different colors of wood. Intarsia and segmented scroll saw art would be another.

Gimp and Inkscape are primary tools in my Toy Makers toolbox. Maybe they should be in yours.

Special Order For Some Play Pal Pickup Trucks

I've been working on a custom order this weekend. All ways make more than I need for the order because something might happen. I could break something or wood being what it is might split, crack or fall apart. I started this batch with 14 trucks I'm down to 10. I expect 10% or greater loss when working with this kind of pine. I once dropped a toy covered with wet paint in the dirt. If I find any defects the toy gets scrapped. I have played around with repairing them, but in most cases, it's easier and faster to toss them and make another toy. Making extra toys saves time when something goes wrong.

A customer purchased one of my Play Pal Pickup Trucks from my Etsy shop and asked for more.

Arranging Patterns To Avoid Defects

Trucks cut and ready for sanding. I started with fourteen toy trucks, and already I'm down to eleven.

Handmade Wooden Toy Trucks Toy Makers Shop Play Pal Trucks Finished with Shellac and Ready For Assembly

The first two trucks are darker because I used the dip and wipe method. I didn't like the results, so I went back to using a brush. I didn't like this method because it is messy, wastes shellac and I have to brush them anyway to get rid of drips. The dip and wipe method might work better with thinner shellac, but I didn't have a proper container on had to experiment with.

The finish is one coat of shellac hand rubbed smooth with steel wood and wax.

Wooden Toy Truck, Pickup Truck from the Play Pal Series - Complete and ready to go.