Toy Workshop (TWS2025-01) with General Meeting 1-11-2025

We held our first Toy Workshop (TWS) for 2025 on Saturday January 11, 2025, from 8:30 to 11:00 am. This was held at the Wood Shop at 910 Wood Ave in Rapid City. The shop is in the basement of the annex to Our Redeemer Lutheran Church. The January General Meeting was held upstairs from 11:00 am to noon.

The attendees at today’s workshop (25) included John, Bob, Kathie, Rick, Grant, Lon, Tony, Ed, Roy B, Roy E, Keith, Al, Don, Lauree, Darwin, Gary G, Russ, Ron (new), Keith, Wyatt, Mary G, Maggie and Jim (at home), Dave M and Stu.

THE TOY PROGRAM. The Toy Program effort consists of 5 major phases:

Phase 1: Tracing

Phase 2: Cutting toys to shape

Phase 3: Milling – routering, drilling, machine sanding

Phase 4: Finish – sealer coat – sanding – spray – sanding

Phase 5: Wheel installations

We are starting a new year of Toy Making today, and so began with Phase 1 – Tracing. Today we traced Toy Patterns onto 2″ thick wood, then cut the traced toys into individual pieces with the band saw. Lastly, we put all toys of one kind into a box, attached an Assembly History Tag, and moved the boxes to the Work In Progress (WIP) store room. Next workshop, some of us can begin working on the next phases: Cutting and Milling.

Our goal for 2025 is to build about 3,500 toys to donate to organizations who work with kids in South Dakota.

Results of Today’s Toymaking Efforts:

Patterns traced: xx

Toys traced: xx

Total Patterns traced to date:

Total toys traced to date: 500

Total Traceable Toy Patterns left to trace: xx (plus Critters)

(All using 2x stock.)

More to come: we will be tracing for the next three or four workshops, as well as starting the cutting and milling. That is, we will start phase 2 – 3 – 4 next time on the toys traced today.

Here are photos from today’s event: