Toy Lorry made from reclaimed Beech

Table WIP To obtain a copy of the plans, RIGHT-CLICKon the thumbnail of the lorry little pic of lorry and "Save Target As..." to save a copy.







Raw material was resawed from an old 2 1/2 inch square beech table leg. Load deck was 6mm birch ply.
Table WIP The cab parts of the truck are the most tricky. I decided to use simple holes cut by forstner bit on an oversized board.

After separating they are cleaned up on the shooting board and lightly sanded.
Table WIP The shooting board is ideal for squaring up small thin pieces
lorryproject wip The wheels are cut using a holesaw from another board.

The finished article used a beech board with four short pieces of beech glued across the grain to give a 2-ply laminate. This was to avoid splitting or ovalling due to shrinkage. The prototype wheels split on removal of the hubcaps when I needed to make longer axles
lorryproject wip The wheels are mounted on an M6 screw and nut.
lorryproject wip Then they are mounted in a drill press (poor man's vertical lathe) for smoothing and shaping by a file, sandpaper and finally 3M abrasive scouring pad.

NB this is a risky process, and a file handle MUST be used on the file if you are to avoid a nasty stab injury.
lorryproject wip The shoulders are cleaned up on a special shooting board that I designed to allow the use of a shoulder plane, as well as the normal bench plane.
Use in pairs to support the plane's weight.
lorryproject wip The other mating faces of the butt joint were trued-up with the shoulder plane (Lie-Nielsen #73)
lorryproject WIP All four pieces of the lorry load deck were grooved with a 6mm cutter in a Record #050c combination plane.
The special jig is designed by me to hold the small pieces without need for clamps which would normally foul the plane body.
Table WIP The cab sides are glued onto the lorry sides and allowed to cure. They are planed on both faces so that the join is almost invisible.
The four sides of the llorry are glued together with the deck, which is glued into the grooves, forming a 5 sided box.
A simple roof is first chamfered on a router table, and then glued on top of the cab.
The axles run through two blocks that are glued to the underside of the load deck. Both the blocks and the wheels are drilled 1/4 inch diameter.
The 1/4 inch axles are fitted woith child-proof hub caps to hold the wheels on.
Finish is 4 coats of Danish oil, which is harmless to children, according to the manufacturer's label.