Me: "Are your feet cold?"
Levi: "No. They are warm inside the skin."

I need to take the blanket off so my body can get fresh air - Levi

"You know what berry, berry, berry, berry, berry, berry, berry large coctopus eats? Large whales. They use coctopus juice to confuse the whales." Levi

"That's what eyes do dad - they bounce back into your head. BOOINGG!" Levi

Levi getting on "airplane" swing: "Daddy there WAS lots of bird poop on it. But I scraped it off!"

New blog site at http://plasticplanes.blogspot.com since Levi has me making so many these days.

Can you make ... part 2

The requests keep coming in which gives me some great excuses to launch into projects I have always wanted to do.

The first thing I did was build a paint booth out of melamine and plywood scraps I had in the garage. To help protect the wood and make it easier to "clean" overspray, I put on two coats of lacquer. It's now so pretty, that I almost hate to paint in it.

But, when the lacquer was good and set, the booth was put to use as I used it while sealing a wooden ship model before I apply paint to it. I did not go fancy on the booth by putting in air vents and such since it is more of a place to contain the paint, and I can drop a piece of plastic down to protect the drying paint from particles in the air or WPF (Wet Paint Finger) accidents.

The next thing was to search for a new project. I scoured around the internet looking for wooden toy plans. One of the first places I found was Vintage Projects. You can find plans to build your own power tools, motorized vehicles for the kids, boats, go carts ... lots of things. The plans are from the days when companies did not have to worry about getting sued over the stupidity of the end-user. While I found a number of interesting projects (will that 25' cabin cruiser fit in my garage or do I need to build a workshop?) most were too large for what I was looking to do. After a few more searches, I came across Fine Hardwood Toys for Your Children's Children from Wisconsin (that is the title of the site). While there are no plans provided, ideas were generated. After rummaging through the garage and deciding that buying a lathe to turn wheels was out of the question (at least until Christmas) a trip to Michael's to buy wheels was undertaken and later on a Saturday afternoon Levi helped me lacquer my interpretretation of a wood train (my train will be lucky to survive the horde as it is made out of pine scraps, and excess closet rod dowel with pre-turned 1" wheels from Michael's).

The kids have loved the train -- I started with an engine and two other cars: one is a barrel car that carries 4 "pickle" barrels (from Michael's too) and the other car is a "tanker" car with the tank being removable.

The kids have made all kinds of "trains" out of it -- Levi has shooting trains as he likes to lay the barrels horizontally like cannons. Rachel made a bubble gum train which has probably generated the most fights and squabbles as everyone wants to play with that train. Rachel is happy to oblige; of course, after she has removed all the gum.

Now I am getting requests for more cars for the train as it is "too short" (each car is 8" long); good thing that I made templates of the bodies and the placement of the holes, dowls and cut-outs. Next up will be a flat car with a platform over the wheels so that when Levi's WALL-E goes for a ride, he is not dragging on the train wheels. The girls have wanted to know where the Caboose is, and the request includes an option to put people or other items in it.

One great find at Michael's are these wood kits that retail for $1.00. That is correct, for $1 (plus tax) you get a wood kit that is usually around 12 to 20 pieces of very easy construction, paint (4 colors), glue and a paint brush. Did I say they only cost $1?

The selection is great too -- you can build complete trains (about 6 cars total), race cars, biplanes, pirate ships, rubber-band propelled submaries, rubber-band airplanes (they don't fly, just spin the prop), sail boats, jets and as you see to the right, space craft. The hardest part was getting Levi to leave the space ship alone long enough for the glue to dry. Next kit I may just use hot glue and call it good.

Back in my day, these things would have been a hoot for, uhm, bb-guns, fire crackers, oh, and other assorted mayhem. Come to think of it they may be a hoot today as well.

The tool set I am using is pretty simple: 12" Craftsman bandsaw, a Craftsman belt/disc sander combo, a Craftsman table saw, and a Craftsman 3/4 HP drill press with 10" clearance all supported by a Bostich air compressor. Now I just need a bigger workshop or get Denise to agree to leaving the van outside of the garage permanently.

"Can you make .... ?"

Levi loves to build things out of anything he can get his hands on. He has made "alien spaceships" out of a paper plate with a bowl taped to the top; he has rockets hanging from his ceiling made from rolled up paper; yesterday he made mouse "poison" out of sawdust, water, grass, some sand -- just put materials in a zip-lock sandwich bag, close, and shake. A couple of weeks ago, he ran upstairs calling "Daddy, Daddy, come downstairs. Come ... come downstairs." As I started down the stairs he said "Close your eyes" which is always exciting to do when you are walking down stairs. Also, when he says this, it can be either good news or not; many times he wants you to close your eyes so you don't see the mess he has made. Luckily, when I finally was told to open my eyes, with a grand 'TA-DA!' Levi present this creation out of pretzels and marshmallows - a rocket ship flying to the moon.

Other easy creations from Levi's mind include various Tinker-toy(r) creations. At the left is one an airplane that is able to shoot at you from the front, back, or sides. He's also made various rockets, but he always gets upset when it launches and the bottom falls off, or when the rocket starts to go into orbit and the nose falls off.

These are the easy ones because Levi is pretty self-sufficient and adept at using his mind to create what he wants. But when he comes up to Denise or me and says "Can you make ..." then the fun for the parents really begins.

Take the instance of the "Tree-branch and jean blanket Tee-pee" that Lucy and Levi are huddling in. It all started one rainy Saturday when I went out to trim a tree out front. For the last two years this tree has been infested by Japanese beetles, so I decided to trim the tree way back to make it easier to spray (we've resorted to leaning out Anders' 2nd story bedroom window to get the top of the tree).

Levi, who loves Winnie Pooh movies, decides he wants to build an Eeyore "house" out of sticks. Problem is the sticks from this tree are pretty poky. Adding to his misery was the light rain that started to fall. Dad decides to come to his sons rescue by building a tee-pee. First, I had to spend 30 minutes to cut off all the little branches to make the stick somewhat smoother. Then thanks to Lucy, I was able to lash the "poles" together with a length of green yarn. Levi started stacking up the excess branches, but quickly stopped since he was getting poked and caught. What to do? I find an old jean blanket (made out of old jeans, duh) and drape it around the sticks. Viola! Levi and Lucy have a tee-pee with about 45 minutes of work by dad. They loved it so much, somehow they talked their mother into moving it into the house where it still stands 3 weeks later.

Now, a 60 minute project is not all that bad. But Levi likes his dad to build him airplanes: paper airplanes (1 minute); Fokker Dr.I triplane made out of wood (3 days - a nail gun does wonders to speed up the process) to 3 week projects such as the F4U Corsair (blue plane) that Levi gave to me as a "present" for my birthday in 2009, or the AV-8B Harrier -- plastic models that he enjoys flying. It's truly a test of both his and my patience: his, because he so badly wants to get to the paint and play stage and mine, because every 10 minutes of "is it dry yet?" or the disappearing/reappearing plane parts over 3 weeks makes for a very long journey. But any aggravation I might feel quickly disappears when you see the joy of a 4-year-old who is now flying a plane he has helped to glue, paint and put stickers on.

PS: To make plastic models durable for little guys, nothing beats a good dose of hot glue to affix landing gears, rockets, bombs, canopies, wings, propellers and any other part that may come loose during use.