Wood and childhood sort of go together. Like fingers and splinters really!
They cross at certain points, sometimes painfully, only to remain apart again for ages. From the moment we start climbing trees we have a strong connection to wood.
The first real time it appeared on my radar as a kid was as a lump of balsa. I was never any good at modelling but I can clearly recall slicing away at the soft timber to create a bridge and funnel for a barge. The boat's body was courtesy of that unusual fruity treen, the date box. Those boats were easy to make even for a klutz like me.
The next timbers in my life were wooden lolly sticks, the well-fed brothers of toothpicks. You know, the short paddles supplied with Sky Ray or Zoom or Funny Faces. Licking the stick was always a somewhat grainy pleasure but it had to be done. Used sticks could be made into all sorts of things: an Action Man cricket bat, Action Man skis, Action Man splints. You get the idea. Greater minds than mine could fashion them into knotted shapes like tri-angles and pentagons, which were able to be thrown. I'm sure I've also seen entire forts made of lollipop sticks! Have you?
Next on my wooden journey were planks. Planks could be fashioned into small things and immense structures such as dens depending on the pile of timber available. Dens require a post in themselves I reckon but a single plank was readily kitbashed into that staple of a Fifties, Sixties and Seventies childhood, the toy wooden rifle! With some prudent diagonal sawing, vigorous sanding and the addition of a gate bolt, a simple kid-size rifle was possible complete with metallic cocking sound and action. Did you or your family make these readers?
Probably the single most important wooden item of my early teens was the broom handle. I adored them. My Dad ran a cash and carry warehouse so their was an almost limitless supply, which was useful when you were recreating the entire weapons arsenal of ancient China and Japan! I made nuchakus, tonfas, jo's, bo's, naginata, kusarigami, halberds, spears and tridents, all from broom handles. Those were glorious days in the shed and I felt like the Shogun's personal armourer!
I suppose there was a much smaller piece of timber present throughout my whole life. Yes, the humble match or to give it its Sunday name, the matchstick. My relationship with matches was mixed. I enjoyed making a match stand up through a hole in the box top, which was one of my party pieces. I enjoyed making small bangers out of them and a bit of tin foil. I also liked to watch a whole box of Vestas go up in flames. What I didn't enjoy was the arse-tanning I got from my Dad after setting fire to the Kitchen bin with a match! It was an accident Dad!
In my adult stage I suppose wood forms much of my home. I love wooden floors and shelves and nic-nacs. I also like to burn old logs and lumps in a fire-pit on dark summer nights these days and aided by a cold beer reminisce about my life in the forest of existence!
How have you and wood got on readers? Were you a whittler maybe or a maker of things?
Back in the 50's wood was available while British made toys were being exported. The result was a lot of WW2 compromise by fathers in making wood toys for or with their sons.
ReplyDeleteI have fond memories of the fire station my Dad built me that I helped paint red. The many swords, guns sailing ships and yes those date box boats, mine were sometimes galleons sometimes tug boats with barges.
For model train layouts there were printed paper sheets of building exteriors that you could paste on the front of a wood building made of balsa or plywood.
Well into the 1960's Tri-ang toys combined metal, plastic and wood into their toys.
Buildings from lolly sticks could take a long time to collect the building materials, these days I only have to go into an art/craft store and I can buy a pack of them.
These days I use lolly sticks as a base for painting items. A photo will be sent.
You have a history with wood Terran. I love the idea of your Dad making wooden toys with you. I wonder if that's a lost art form?
DeleteI seldom use wood to make anything as it changes shape over time as it dries out. I did make a Planet of the Apes rifle in just the way you described!
ReplyDeleteI'd never thought of that Kev. Don't engineers make models made of wood for creating machinery and wind-tunnel models? Maybe they don't need to last?
DeleteI had my scout knives so whittling was part of my childhood. My grandfathers carried pocket knives and so did I. I still do.
ReplyDeleteMost of my young whittling was making balsa wood boats, we called rain gutter regatas. Block of balsa, a balsa post, a file card for the sail. You'd have 2 gutters side by side, filled with water and puff to make your boat sail to the other end. I made a catamaran, complete with twin rudders, and destroyed the competition who all went with more traditional v hulls. Next year there were a lot of catamarans lol.
Later years would find me and my friends making wood and pvc swords for forest combat shenanigans. Then staffs for renaissance festivals.
Fab memories Lance. I love that, rain gutter regattas. That HAS to be the name of your autobiography! I amazed that you had renaissance festivals in the US. What, knights in armour?
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