The Beard: Handmade Ride-On Toy

Sam has been riding the vacuum for months now.  Amy picked up these casters with the intention of making him a little toy to ride on. Like most projects we do, we get excited, gather all of the necessary materials... and six months later we finally find the time to make it!  This project was no exception. There has been a small pause at work.  Instead of making benches for the dining room table, which would have been the logical thing to work on, and instead of working on my beloved sauna, which sadly is still nowhere near ready to use, I picked this project and ran with it. The body is a big scrap of douglass fir.  Fir smells really good when you cut into it and it is easy to shape.  The seat and neck are made of cherry.   I put it all together using wooden dowels and glue, except for the casters, which are screwed on.  As far as fabricating a toy piece by piece like this, it went fairly quickly, except for the seat.  I spent as long on the seat as on all of the rest of the parts combined.  It has to be comfortable, you know? Sam seems to like it.  He gets on an off of it frequently, looks at it, gets back on, Flintstone shuffles, stops, gets off and repeats the process.  He even tried to surf it, but that got him in trouble with mom.