Making it smooth! Harmony In Wood!

 First a really important story!  Our earliest toys were much more crudely made.  We had designed some neat stuff, but we didn't know much about the fine points of making our things smooth and polished!  Fortunately for me, one of my very first "sales" calls fixed that!  I had stopped in Pittsford, NY at a very nice shop called Harmony In Wood.  As I arrived with my cardboard box of toy samples, Carol and Marko - owners - were sitting on a bench in front of the store.  They were very sooty, dirty, thirsty, and obviously not in any mood to talk to a salesman! They were taking a break from cleaning up after a fire that had happened the night before! I tried to quietly take my leave, but Marko said that he would love to look at my toys!  I spread out my toys in the dirt driveway in front of the store, and Marko and Carol carefully examined them.  After some time, Marko began to talk, and in summary, he basically told me I had some great designs, but that my craftsmanship was terrible.  I remember him being a bit more graphic than "terrible".  However, to my everlasting wonder, Marko then proceeded to give me a short but well organized lesson in how to properly finish my work!  He told me about sanders like the ones shown in this post, and about the router shown in the next post, and about the mineral oil that I will tell you about later.  His encouragement about my designs gave me the courage to go on with this crazy enterprise, and his lessons in craftsmanship made our work truly good!  Marko and Carol, told me to go home and "finish" my work, and that they would buy it when I returned.  I did that, and they were as good as their word, and they often reinforced that early quality lesson, as they fairly regularly sent back pieces that we had not done up to their standards.  Carol and Marko were centrally responsible for the success of The Toycrafter, and Harmony In Wood was my longest steady customer.  I learned to make every toy to pass the Marko and Carol test!  Harmony In Wood went out of business recently, but they out lived The Toycrafter!

Above and below, Elizabeth carefully sands the sides and bottom of the Rolls Royce, and lightly "rolls" over the edge between the sides and bottom.

Below, Don uses the 1 inch wide vertical belt sander to work on the edges, making them smooth like Marko and Carol wanted them to be.  They were right - they looked a lot better! Just a side note that we used our income tax refund for that year to buy the $69 vertical belt sander!

Saturday morning at the Ithaca Farmers Market - 1974!

A break in the saga of the production of a set of Rolls Royces.  So many story lines in this picture!  Yes, I am selling out of a VW Bug!  Not visible in the picture is the car top carrier that sometimes seemed to be larger than the car itself.  No actual booth here - just a simple plywood table with a blanket over it!  Elizabeth later made some very nice fabric table covers, that made it very handy to store our inventory hidden under the table. When we needed a booth, there was a big pile of 2x4's on top, plus wood shelves, and sometimes even an adult sized rocking horse at the top of the pyramid!  In those days, there were none of the very handy white metal frame tents that we all see at shows now. We actually constructed a full wooden frame, with shelves, tables, etc. all bolted in place, with a blue tarp for a roof.  Bad light with a blue roof, but we were all in the same situation, so it worked out. Yes, I'm wearing my well worn engineer's cap again.  Not sure about the Buffalo State t-shirt, except that I had a very large collection of t-shirts, all purchased out of the seconds bin at the Champion factory for 25 cents each!

Looking over the table, you can see some of the toys already mentioned.  There is a climbing bear, and a flying butterfly hanging in the back corner of the table.  Front and center are a couple of the helicopters I mentioned earlier.  At the back of the circle of cars is the Rolls Royce I have been talking about.  I'll fill you in on the other cars later.  The 4-car train is there, along with what we called a cement mixer.  I have been recently informed that it is actually a concrete mixer!  Beside the cash box is one of my very earliest designs - the bee pull toy, complete with spinning wings.  The basket is full of little wooden cars.  More about wheels later, but the wheels on the little wooden cars in the basket are ones we made ourselves.

We were all just lined up along the sides of a dirt parking lot down near the inlet at the foot of Cayuga Lake in Ithaca, NY - most folks were selling produce, plants, etc, but there were quite a few crafts people.  Potters, woodworkers, a toy maker (us), etc.  Side note - I still use a cutting board purchased from friends Chris and Ginny Gartlein at the Ithaca Farmer's Market.

I'll go back to Rolls Royce making in the next post, but I wanted you to see that we actually made and sold wooden toys!