I'm thinking about building some sort of toy box for my 15 month old son, and was considering making a model barn with the roof opening up to put the stuff in. I was thinking of making it somewhat realistic - wooden peg construction is what I call it (I'm new to this). Any tips on a project like this? Tools to use and techniques? I'm new to this - we have a few old barns around our place, but I didn't have anything to do with their construction I'm just looking to do something a little out of the ordinary, and yet still remain practical. I also teach industrial arts, and thought this would be a neat project to work on with some of my students when they have the time.

Thanks!

Shultz,

Wow, what a cool idea! I have a 9 month old and am getting to the point of needing to build him a toybox. Perhaps I should pay you to build a second.....

You could use ramin dowels from your local building supply for the pegs; 3/16" or so and shave a taper into one end with a pocket knife to make them look authentic.

I'd probably start with 1"x1" boards for the posts and beams.

email me if you like, I think this is a great project and I'd love to help you plan it!

Shaun Garvey
Berkshire Barns

Hi Schultz - great idea! I made a model of my frame before I actually built it to learn about the joinery. It was built to the actual design except for the number of pegs. Depending on how far you want to go and what tools you have, you can fairly easily make an exact miniature of a timber frame. I made mine at 1/8 scale so my 8x8s scaled to 1"x1". This is a very easy size to work with and my beams scaled nicely to common fractions of inches. I used some ash that I had laying around. To rough out the mortises, I used end-mill bits in my drill press and held the wood in an X-Y sliding vise so I could accurately and rapidly cut the mortises. To finish them, I only needed to square off the rounded ends of the mortises. I also used this method to form the tenons. Clearly, this could all be done with simple hand tools, but this was a fast, accurate way to make miniature beams. Good luck with your project. jekbear

I would very much like to make a model barn. I would need a good plan to work from, though. Ideally, it would be a classic style barn our timberframe house, one that demonstrated different kinds of joints. I assume that if you got a good barn architectural blueprint the image might be the exact scale you want.

Are there any good plans out there, ideally free, that I could experiment with? This URL is the right idea...

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/100_tim.html#Standish

but doesn't show the joinery...

please write back to me at my email - as well as to this forum

DAN MCGUIRE
<dandmccguire@mac.com>