Wooden Push Car

Simple, eco-friendly and non-toxic wooden car.

Things you need:

• Scrap wood
• 4 wheels (or another piece of scrap wood if you use a hole saw)
• eco-friendly paint
• sanding paper
• hand saw (or a jig saw)
• drill (or preferably a drill press)
• 5mm dowel (approx 10cm long)
• glue (epoxy)

I have a whole box of leftover scrap and cut-offs, with pieces that are sometimes less than 10cm long. Use whatever you have left over (you can even glue two pieces together) and roughly sketch your template with a pencil. Cut it out with a jigsaw, scroll saw or sand it down with a sanding machine. To prevent splits, you can apply some masking tape.

I drew the shape of the car on the leftover timber and used a miter and a jigsaw to cut out the shape and then, I sanded it to the desired shape using 80 grit sandpaper, followed by a final sanding with 240 grit.

Next, drill two holes for the wheels. If you have a steady hand, you can use a handheld drill, but a drill press is preferable. The holes should be slightly larger (1 to 2 mm) than the diameter of your dowel to ensure that the wheels turn smoothly.

Before attaching the wheels, I painted the body of the car and some parts of the wheels. Use only non-toxic paints.

My initial plan was to make wooden wheels with a drill press and a hole saw, but since I already had these wheels at home (I bought them once in a local DIY store), I decided to use them instead.

I cut two dowels (I used 5mm) and pushed them through the holes. Only glue the wheels to the dowel. Make sure that the dowel is not glued to the body of the car, as you want the wheels to rotate freely.

Don't throw away you scrap wood. It can always come in handy.