Note, this should have been first, but Craftisian doesn't have a good way to go back and add a new entry out of order, as far as I can tell.
We've got a couple kids in the neighborhood now. They were both born in December 2025, and I gave them both rattles. For Christmas 2026, I decided to make a couple toy cars for them, based on ones I saw that Crowie had made a few years ago.
The parts are all finished on their show surfaces before assembly. Ring-porous woods (oak and russian olive, mostly) get a coat of shellac, followed by sanding with progressively finer sandpaper. I typically work up the grits going 60, 120, 220, then 400.
Then I finish using three to five coats of RMP Half & Half with a quick buff with 0000 steel wool after each coat cures. This leaves a pretty dang good matte surface.
And then Assembly, followed by touch-up to remove any glue squeeze-out and either a final coat or three of shellac, or a quick buff with carnauba wax.
Thanks. One of my "spares" already went to another friend who has a 2-year-old grand-kid. Figuring out how to make axles that rolled well was the major thing I learned from these, I think.
