Tweet
My youngest 8 year old walked up and informed me that school craft projects deadlines were soon approaching and he had the "Making Wooden Toys" issue in hand. He proceeded to open the mag to the checker project. My heart skipped a beat as I quickly grabbed the magazine and went looking for something a little more 8 yr oldish. He had already done the simple puzzles and was ready to go on to something more substantial, so we looked. He found several projects he liked, but either I didn't have the right materials or the projects required tools I also don't have. I finally conceded to let him try the compound cutting project.
Then, the wife informed me that 40% of the project had to be original design. Hmmmm, this keeps getting better and better. I wasn't going to cheat and do the design for him, so we started out sketching some ideas, and then thought about doing checker pieces with cat heads (and dogs which are still on the drawing board). Definately met the 40% requirement, but there was no we he was going to sketch cat profiles. So, off to google to find front and side profiles for cats. We kept with the dimension in the article, but that is about all. I'm not the most patient for teaching photoshop, but teaching to an 8yr old about killed me. I got the pictures in and aligned and he cleaned them and finished drawing out missing parts of the outlines.
I saw in the checker article that the author did not use the compound cutting jig, but used tape to hold everything together. I thought this might be easier so we tried that approach. He did pretty good on the cutting (first attempt on pine, second on oak). Good thing about cutting thick wood, you have time to think . . . . .
-------Randy
Then, the wife informed me that 40% of the project had to be original design. Hmmmm, this keeps getting better and better. I wasn't going to cheat and do the design for him, so we started out sketching some ideas, and then thought about doing checker pieces with cat heads (and dogs which are still on the drawing board). Definately met the 40% requirement, but there was no we he was going to sketch cat profiles. So, off to google to find front and side profiles for cats. We kept with the dimension in the article, but that is about all. I'm not the most patient for teaching photoshop, but teaching to an 8yr old about killed me. I got the pictures in and aligned and he cleaned them and finished drawing out missing parts of the outlines.
I saw in the checker article that the author did not use the compound cutting jig, but used tape to hold everything together. I thought this might be easier so we tried that approach. He did pretty good on the cutting (first attempt on pine, second on oak). Good thing about cutting thick wood, you have time to think . . . . .
-------Randy
Comment