Wee Battle tackle

Sword is 30cm long, shield is 28cm.

I'm heading up to the north lands (of Montreal) tomorrow for a wedding, and will get to meet a good friends wee son for the first time. I have made the young prince some battle tackle for his upcoming 1 year old adventures.

The sword blade is poplar, with Oak hilt. The handle is velvet ribbon. I was inspired by the Rohirrim on this design.  The shield is 3mm birch plywood with poplar handle. the boss is made out of a metal ramekin. Normally I just epoxy them on, but they take some smacking, so this time I riveted it on for extra support.

You can see more projects of wee war gear here.
http://skullandcrown.blogspot.com/2009/12/battle-tackle-elf-style.html

Cheers!

Pokemon Sword and Shield - and Impending Salute!

" I choose you..." 
                  ~ every Pokemon trainer...everrr

 Wee Sword and Board Trainer-

This Pokemon inspired shield and sword are a gift heading to a friend's 1 year old. I am trying to make these a "traditional" gift for my friends' children. This theme was inspired by the mom, who taught her daughter to say "pikachoo" instead of peekaboo!  Gawd but I love a dysfunctional art family!

Sword blade is Cherry with Poplar hilt and pommel.

The writing was my wife's clever inspiration.

On the work bench! Note my cool 1950's (?) pack of needles.
I bought my sewing kit 20 years ago from an estate sale.

Off to Salute! 

I'm scrambling to get everything in order before I leave for Salute in a few days- all the gifts I am bringing, orders I'm muling, and you know, things like underwear... I was hoping to run  a big Wooden Wars game there, but apparently the show was booked for games like a half year in advance, with 23 "stand by" games in the wings before I came calling. Maybe next year then!

My big goal for Salute really is to find someone over the pond with whom I can work and license my models- as shipping costs over to the U.K. and Europe are really crippling.  So if you know anyone...

I'll be over at Simon Miller's " To the Bravest" game as well as playing games with the Warlords, so if you happen by, I'd love to meet you face to face. I'm bringing wooden soldiers to pass out- so look me up! (I'm the one on the left of the picture)
Cheers
Thomas

Tie fighter Rattle

wings are made of poplar and oak.

I chose this rattle as it had very large "glue to" points. And made a nice sound.

In all its splendor, racing around our tree!

Here is a christmas present for our young next door neighbor, Kyle. His dad wanted to name him Darth, but, well we know how that went.  My kids refer to him as Darth Kyle ( they actually think that is his name!)  I saw this rattle in our local cool toy store and was inspired.

Task Force: Wooden Cruisers

 Project Wooden Cruiser:

Last Christmas I made my son a wooden battleship.  It was looking lonely, or out of place amongst the lego cargo ships, so I decided to make a couple of "cruisers" to go along with it.

ships are moslty poplar, with toy wheels for turrets.

Captain Fossling between the devil and the deep blue sea.

As per the house tradition, the children name the ships. My son named his the USS Helpful. When pressed, he stated it was  because it helps his battleship. USS Battley. My  2.5 year old daughter christened her cruiser the USS Alanana, which she assures us is Spanish, yet the definition changes from time to time.

The task force on manuevers on the Saltillo sea

The Hook:

There is a method to my madness, and in this case the madness is math.  You see, I have been designing more games that I can play with my kids, and Taskforce is now one of them. The Rules are very simple:

Each player gets either the battleship, or the two cruisers. Battleships have 100 hit points, the cruisers each 50.

Each ship gets to roll one D20 attack per barrel on the turrets

The Battley fires her mighty guns!

During a player's turn, they may move ( totally Krieg spiel about  this) adjust turrets towards the target and fire by rolling the dice at the target. Any dice that strike the target and bounce are hits, and the number shown is the damage done.  Natural 20 on the dice also means a turret was hit and  is removed for a turn ( IE lose a die).

When a ship has been damaged past her hit points , she sinks. 

USS Battley takes a pounding!

We keep score on a chalk board, and, using  a lot of fingers and hooks, do the math each time.  They are learning math and don't even know it!  If ever a time I felt like Bill Cosby....

Next will be either a sub, or an aircraft carrier... or another battleship.....

Form wee shield wall!

One of the my real joys in having artistic abilities at all, ( besides having reason to chat up the cute art chicks back in college) is to make toys! Let's face it, all our soldiers are just cool toys! Now, I am, alas, not the lost Perry Triplet, but It does make me happy to see others play with toys I have made.

Another passion of mine is sword fighting and martial arts- something I have been doing for over 30 years, and like art, has literally saved my life more than once. Combining two of my favorite things begat my sword and shield project, which I have been doing for about 5 years now.( see http://skullandcrown.blogspot.com/2009/12/battle-tackle-elf-style.html  for earlier pieces).

 No child should be left unarmed!

Gifts for the soon to be born Sparkes Child. Shield Totally inspired by "How to Train Your Dragon" movie!

 Master Connor's war gear. He likes wolves.

 Young Logan's Battle tackle: he's fond of Dragons and the colors red and yellow.

the shields are made of plywood, with a metal "ramekin" dish hammered a bit into a boss, which is J.B. cold welded on (it's like an awesome epoxy). the back handle is just 1x1inch pine.

The sword blades, in this case, are all made of poplar, with the first sword having red oak hilt, and the others walnut. most of the swords are made from reclaimed wood. the handles are wrapped in velvet ribbon, felted wool, or leather, depending on what I have at the time

Persephone field testing the gear.

A proud papa moment-  Nolan coaches Persephone on prpoer shield technique!

Connor and Lizzie ready for action!

Forming shield wall. Logan was watching a dinosaur movie, and, like Achilles,
 could not be persuaded to join in battle.

I can promise you more wooden toys on the horizon.

Operation: Wooden Battleship

My son's letter to Santa this year, which was all pictures of what he wanted (yeah, I am totally keeping the letter) included a battleship. How cool a challenge is that for a present!  I went to work in the wee hours as he found my blue prints and a research book in my office; questions asked and attention drawn away with ginger bread, the close call meant I had to work in the garage, under cover.

LOOK:
For design, I wanted something Iconic, not worrying so much about accuracy. It had to be big, cool, and have turrets that moved!  My end choices fell between a WWI (?) British ship the Princess, and a WWI Russian battle ship- the round turrets for the win!

The Princess, the inspiration for the hull and stacks.

The Hatsuse, Clean and cool. Curiosly, I thought she had round turrets...

FEEL:
My new choice of sustainable wood with which to work is poplar. It has a great weight, stronger than pine, comes in various colors - seriously you can get it in a light green- sands well, and is cheap. This thing should "feel" like a mighty battleship when picked up by a 3 year old.

 The hull measures 18 inches long and she is just shy of 5 inches wide, and tall.

The business end. My drill caught on  the wooden toy wheels I used for turrets,

so a bit of magic sculpt puttysaved the day.  Maybe next year for christmas I'll get a vise or a drill press!

Finished!
I painted the ship with a mix of Reaper Rainy grey and GW space wolves grey acrylic paints, added in some cannon holes and the stack hole, plus the anchors for a bit of detail.  I toyed with making the deck wooden, but time constraints left me little time for experimentation. Maybe on the next one.

Top down next to my key board for scale.



U.S.S. Battley. The lettering isn't bad considering I had a squirmy 3 year old on my lap, who helped with it.

The busines end!

The  Pay off!  Nolan carried the battleship, named the U.S.S. Battley, number 20,( his current favorite number) for the greater part of the day.  I am thinking a Destroyer escort, and maybe a sub next... then a carrier... I had better come up with a rules set for these to be sure!