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TOY-MAKING AT HOME

How to Make a Hundred Toys from Odds and Ends

by

MORLEY ADAMS







New York
Frederick A. Stokes Company
Publishers

Printed in Great Britain.




PREFACE


This work has been compiled with the assistance of Mr. Walter Higgins,
the well-known instructor in woodwork.

The volume fulfils a long-felt want in that it supplies fascinating
amusement for evenings at home. The making of toys is an engrossing
pastime, and the home-made toy is invariably more novel than the
shop-bought article and of superior quality, besides which there is
always a satisfaction in "I made it myself."

The purpose of the book is to give simple and easily understood
instructions and plain diagrams and sketches for making toys from the
odds and ends that are usually discarded as useless. Matches, Match
Boxes, Cotton Reels, Cocoa Tins, Cigar Boxes, and even Egg Shells
comprise the materials from which are evolved Shops, Working Models,
Dolls' Furniture, Boats, Steam Engines, Windmills, and scores of other
toys dear to the hearts of boys and girls.

Perhaps the chief charm of the occupation is that literally dozens of
toys can be made at a cost of less than a penny. Every toy described in
this book is practicable, and can be easily made by anyone possessing
the smallest amount of handicraft skill. At the same time the
instructions are such as will prove of the utmost value to instructors
of handicraft classes.

                                                       MORLEY ADAMS.




TOY-MAKING AT HOME




TOYS FROM ODDS AND ENDS


In every household there are countless things which are thrown away
immediately they have served one purpose. Cotton-reels may be taken as
an instance. It does not occur to the majority of people that these
little wooden articles, strongly made and well finished, may be put to
some use, even when the cotton has been wound from them. Yet from them
quite useful furniture can be made and playthings innumerable. And
so it is with many other things--match boxes, broken clothes pegs,
cocoa tins, mustard tins, egg shells, cigar boxes, nut shells, corks,
incandescent-mantle cases, old broom handles: there is no end to the
list.

In the following pages we have set out to explain, largely to boys and
girls, just how these odds and ends may be used for the construction of
toys, games, and interesting models. The list is not by any means
complete: such examples as are given are merely suggestive examples. The
boy or girl who has patiently and thoughtfully made some of them will be
in a position to devise and construct many more on similar lines.


Most boys and girls are familiar with those little _paper windmills_,
which turn round gaily in the gentlest breeze--the ones which the
rag-and-bone man gives in exchange for an old bottle. They make a
capital toy for baby brothers and sisters, and they are very easy to
make. All you need is a six-inch square of stiff paper--coloured for
preference--and two pieces of cardboard, each an inch square. First, you
draw out your square as in Fig. 1, and then cut down the diagonals
nearly to the centre square. Now take hold of a corner, and fold it over
to the centre. Secure it there with a small dab of glue. Serve each of
the other corners in turn in similar fashion. Now glue on your two
cardboard squares--one at the centre of the back and the other in the
front, covering the folded corners (Fig. 2). All you need now is a stout
pin to push through the centre of the cards into the end of a stick.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

Now if you nail two strips of wood in the form of a cross, and pin on