We held our first Toy Workshop (TWS) for 2022 on Saturday from 9 to noon. This was 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.
We started our 2022 Toy Build with Tracing, Boxing of blanks, some Critter Bagging and inventory/re-categorizing of left over toys from 2021. Tools of the day were miter saws, sharp pencils, awls, and extra paper boxes.
We installed new LED lighting in low-lit areas of the shop on Friday 1-21-2022 to make it easier to see the patterns that we traced today. Thank you Master Installer Rick!
Critters made last year, but not put in cloth hand-sewn Critter Bags, were bagged in plastic bags for temporary storage, until cloth bags are ready. Forty (40) plastic bags were filled today, to join the 56 extra cloth bags that will be given away in 2022, for a total of 96 critter bags ready for inventory today.
Toys left over from last year were inventoried, and tagged with new category/toy numbers and placed into our Toy Inventory storeroom. A total of 519 toys were leftover from 2021.
Attending today (22): Rollie, Norma, Ken, Al, Harley, Bob, Kathie, Rick, Mary G, Nick, Bel, Lyle, Don, Jim Burk, Darwin, Lauree, John, Julian, Lon, Grant, Tony, Gary Graves.
On January 17, 2022, in preparation for today's TWS, wood was moved from Bob's Shed and Mary Green's RV Barn to the Wood Shop on January 17, 2022, and placed on tables and carts throughout the shop. Other wood was moved to Rick's for toys that are made from 1" poplar, including airplanes, tractors, and thin wheeled animals.
On Saturday morning, we salvaged some additional construction lumber that had been donated by Don Roberts last fall. Some of the wood was warped and bent but by selective cutting, the wood could be used to make toys.
The day of tracing started with a general overview of our tracing process that we have been testing, using, modifying and improving over the past 14 years of toymaking efforts. It seemed that the tracing exercises went very well, and many toys were traced, cut to rough size, and packed in boxes, and labeled for the journey of wooden toymaking that will be completed by the Toy Packing day on Dec 3, 2022. Several boxes were taken home to be worked on in home shops.
Toys Traced today: 492 individual toys from 17 patternsToys Planned for 2022: 2930Toys left over from Last Year (head start for 2022): 519
Photos from today:
For more information, go to www.rapidcitywoodworkers.com.
