Woodworkers Donate 100 Handmade Toys

Woodworker Mac Pace, 76, pointed out the drilled holes and small pieces in a toy bulldozer.

“This was a little stinker,” said Pace, who will this month become the president of the San Fernando Valley Woodworkers.

“It looks simple, but there was a lot of work on that.”

Nonetheless, members of the association made 100 of these bulldozers to be given away this holiday season.

Last week, 32 of them were given to children at a Midwestern Indian reservation. The rest will be donated to several local charities, including the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Toys for the Needy program.

“It’s almost like giving a child an heirloom,” said Arron Latt, the group’s current president.

“Most of what you buy in a store is plastic and falls apart. This is something we hope the children will pass along to their children.”

The association has made the toys every holiday season since 1993 when they produced a toy stake truck carrying a load of lumber.

In other years they have made tractor-trailers and airplanes.

“There’s a lot of preparation that goes into it,” said Pace, who started woodworking as a hobby after retiring as a machinist in 1990.

Planning and designing of each toy begins early in the year.

The group usually considers four or five prototypes before settling on a design that is appropriate for production over a two-night period.

To aid in the production, Pace makes a jig, a pre-drilled frame that ensures each hole and each piece are formed exactly the same.

During production, which was held this year at Pierce College, the 30 members of the group were each in charge of a different task.

For example, Pace’s job was to put the glue on the wooden pins and then to pass the toy down the line for its next stage of production.

Also, the group held a toy-building contest in November during which its members created 15 toys, such as a rocking horse, trucks, locomotives and a baby crib.

All of these toys were donated to Northridge Hospital Medical Center.