Craft Plywood, Scrap Wood, and a Few Hours Equals Happy Kids

I often have small projects that land on my workbench that provide fun little diversions from my routine. Over the years working with my mother-in-law for her Sunday school class we have produced several rounds of 3 legged stools, sailboats, chariots, and even the Ark of the Covenant! Enough time has passed that we felt we could pull the chariots out of the vault and make these again for the kids. But this time I improved on the design with the help of some 3/32″ craft ply found at Michaels.

Each week I share a short video with my Hand Tool School members and I featured this project in one of these recent emails. In this case I thought my wider audience might enjoy this as well. Plus this video features the custom written song for me by Underhill Rose that was one of my Kickstarter rewards on their last campaign. This was a fun project and making 12 of them (15 actually with my prototypes) was a nicer refresher on mass production in a hand tool shop.

The chariots were a huge hit with the kids. They assembled them and made clothespin horses to pull them. I gotta say we keep setting the bar higher for these projects and I look forward to the next challenge.

Your Turn

What simple and small projects have you built where you have to slip into mass production mode? Please share in the comments below, I’m always looking for new ideas.