Noah's Ark Elephant - The Woodcrafter Page© 2004

The wonderfully familiar story of Noah's Ark was the starting point for a very interesting hobby. It involved designing and building an educational toy that would capture the heart of every child, and it led to free form sculpturing on a power tool. An entertaining project to make, and it calls for creative expression in one of the oldest art forms.
Mr. Richard L Felver, an Industrial Designer who teaches at Carnegie Institute of Technology, made the toy Noah's Ark for his little daughter, Sally, aged 5. Sally and all the children in the neighborhood are just fascinated with it. Although there are plans for the entire project here, Mr. Felver says the most fun comes from using your own imagination in sculpturing the animals.
The ark and six animals are shown on the following pages. The ark itself is not difficult to build, but it does have quite a bit of thought behind it. It is large enough to keep a child's interest for many hours at a time, yet it can be easily moved about. It is ruggedly constructed to take a lot of hard use. The removable top deck and the large hinged door satisfy a child's inquisitive urge to get to the "inside" of things. There are steps leading down from the top deck to the animal stalls and a passageway behind the stalls is provided to show how the animals are fed from inside the boat. The toy is very nice for teaching a child not only the story of Noah's Ark, but about the various animals, and about boats in general, and the many other things he will have questions about.

The real challenge, of course, is in carving the animals from just a plain block of wood. All of the animals for this project were sculptured on a BAND SAW. A very interesting technique that we think has excellent possibilities and will become more and more popular. Mr. Felver says it gives you the feel of doing free hand sketching with the added attraction of working in the third dimension.

The band saw has long been used for curve cutting in a single plane. When you have the curves intersect one another in different planes you get form and shape.

By varying either the curve or the angle that it crosses another curve, you will have an altogether different result. The artistry comes in when you visualize the effect you will achieve by using various cuts.

The animals shown here have been "abstracted" - that is, only the important features of each animal are emphasized while the details are eliminated. A child recognizes the animals by their general shape and distinctive things

such as the elephant's trunk or the camel's hump. There are drawings and photographs showing how each of these animals was made. Use them to get started on sculpturing with power tools. As you become more proficient you will find many uses for your other power machinery in sculpturing.
We were so enthused about this idea of free form sculpturing on a band saw that we devoted quite a bit of this issue to what was originally planned as a Christmas Toy Project. The next issue of Deltagram is the traditional

Christmas issue with ideas and projects that will add to your enjoyment of the holidays. We will carry through with the idea of power tool sculpturing on other toys that will appeal to children. There will be ideas on a Circus

Wagon and plans for making pull-toys out of the animals shown in this issue. It's not too early to start with this Noah's Ark and we feel sure you will get a lot of enjoyment out of sculpturing on a power tool.

*********** WARNING***********
Read my page on safety before building this item.