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- Sep 27, 2002
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- 3,411
My 5 year old son hasn't really got any toy guns so some time ago, I decided to make him one. I got a rather rough piece of board and drew the outline of a rifle in 2/3 scale on it. I chose the Lee Enfield number 1 mk3, as used in WW1 and they early part of WW2.
I just quickly cut around the outline with a jigsaw and roughly rounded off the edges with a spokeshave and a rasp. Then I painted the metal parts black and stained the wood parts dark brown though to be fair there is a bit of overlap! All in all probably took just over an hour, a lot of which was taking measurements from a picture and converting.
The youngster has had a lot of fun playing with the end product to the extent it is now getting a bit knocked about!
Recently he has become infatuated with the film Zulu, so I decided to make a 2/3 scale wooden Martini-Henry, but try to do a better job this time.
I found a nicer piece of planed softwood board and drew the scale rifle on it in the same way. Then cut round it with the jigsaw but I spent a lot more time rounding out the shape. The trickiest part being the angle where the barrel is set into the woodwork on the real rifle. It is a lot less than perfect owing to the graininess and knottiness of the wood.
I then painted the metal parts in grey watercolour (2 coats) and for the wooden parts I made a dilute brown wash to try to stain the wood darker. I then polished it overall with Briwax.
I made a separate trigger guard from the tinplate from a food tin but it is very thin and I'm not happy with it. Also I haven't yet fitted a cocking lever or cleaning rod end. I'm trying to think of a simple way to make a moving cocking lever.
The sling is 1" white nylon webbing, the originals were white leather I think.
The sling on the SMLE is a genuine WW2 Sten gun sling, 7/8" wide as opposed to the 1 1/8" Lee Enfield one, so roughly in scale.
Anyone else had a go at making their own kid's toys?
I just quickly cut around the outline with a jigsaw and roughly rounded off the edges with a spokeshave and a rasp. Then I painted the metal parts black and stained the wood parts dark brown though to be fair there is a bit of overlap! All in all probably took just over an hour, a lot of which was taking measurements from a picture and converting.
The youngster has had a lot of fun playing with the end product to the extent it is now getting a bit knocked about!
Recently he has become infatuated with the film Zulu, so I decided to make a 2/3 scale wooden Martini-Henry, but try to do a better job this time.
I found a nicer piece of planed softwood board and drew the scale rifle on it in the same way. Then cut round it with the jigsaw but I spent a lot more time rounding out the shape. The trickiest part being the angle where the barrel is set into the woodwork on the real rifle. It is a lot less than perfect owing to the graininess and knottiness of the wood.
I then painted the metal parts in grey watercolour (2 coats) and for the wooden parts I made a dilute brown wash to try to stain the wood darker. I then polished it overall with Briwax.
I made a separate trigger guard from the tinplate from a food tin but it is very thin and I'm not happy with it. Also I haven't yet fitted a cocking lever or cleaning rod end. I'm trying to think of a simple way to make a moving cocking lever.
The sling is 1" white nylon webbing, the originals were white leather I think.
The sling on the SMLE is a genuine WW2 Sten gun sling, 7/8" wide as opposed to the 1 1/8" Lee Enfield one, so roughly in scale.
Anyone else had a go at making their own kid's toys?
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