Best toy making books according to redditors
We found 7 Reddit comments discussing the best toy making books. We ranked the 7 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 7 Reddit comments discussing the best toy making books. We ranked the 7 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Chris Lubkemann is hands down the best guy to follow for learning how to whittle. He makes stuff out of twigs and branches. I have the book here which is fantastic, and cheap to boot. The Victorinox Tinker is the knife he recommends for whittling, and that book will also teach you the best way to sharpen it for whittling. There's a story told about Chris where he was invited to come to a convention and talk about his craft. He walked into the convention with a plastic grocery bag full of branches and twigs and said something to the effect of "I just pruned the tree outside and have about $1000 worth of carvings, just in this bag."
Also take a look at Swedish Sloyd craft. Sloyd roughly translates to "handmade," and Jogge Sundqvist is a good name to look up for Sloyd craft. It's a bit different but no less interesting.
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Book-Wooden-Easy---Build/dp/1565234316/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319012028&sr=1-1
It is a very nicely illustrated book with pretty cool plans in it (lots of trains, but also planes and trucks and other such things...)
It looks really cool and I’m gonna get it. By the way, I’m not sure if you saw it or not, but there’s another book that’s on whittling with a Swiss Army knife. I’ll put a link at the end of my comment.
https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Swiss-Knife-Whittling-Step/dp/156523877X/ref=pd_cart_crc_cps_1_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=156523877X&pd_rd_r=HKTQXMT7V29DSWWN6WET&pd_rd_w=PHn1i&pd_rd_wg=575zj&pf_rd_i=cart-page-widgets&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=4820424655227640237&pf_rd_r=HKTQXMT7V29DSWWN6WET&pf_rd_s=cart-page-widgets&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=HKTQXMT7V29DSWWN6WET
There's a lot out there and it depends what sort of puzzles you want to make.
My favorites are the Burr Puzzles, especially the modern variants that have proliferated in the 21st century
Ishino's Site has hundreds of such designs - I believe the point of the site is that they are free for personal use - finding the simpler designs will be the hard part, but you can search by shape to keep things simpler. Designers to check out: Osamori Yamamoto, Gregory Benedetti, Jos Bergmans, Bill Cutler, Stephan Chomine, William Hu, Tom Jolly, Jeff Namkung....loads more, but I think all of these guys have a few relatively simple designs that are still worthwhile puzzles
Brian Menold's book has some great designs with step-by-step instructions. Little Kenny and Bundle of Sticks Jr. from this book are quite nice.
There's also the Charlie Self, Tom Lensch book
There are also the older books by E. M. Wyatt and Stewart Coffin that have puzzle designs like basic 6-piece burrs
Woodworking sites and magazines often have articles on puzzle-making
If you're more interested in making other types of puzzle, I'm sure you can find plenty of things on the web
check this book out.
http://www.amazon.com/Zany-Wooden-Toys-That-Whiz/dp/1565233948/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376347228&sr=8-1&keywords=wooden+toys+fly
I run a program similar to what you described. Lots of neat little toys in here. Some will be a little more in depth than what you need, but it should help spark your imagination
Two more for the mechanically inclined:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Boy-Mechanic-Makes-Toys/dp/1588166392
http://www.amazon.com/The-Boy-Mechanic-Classic-Mechanics/dp/1588165094/ref=pd_sim_b_1
Both sit over my shop bench, next to my tools.