Here’s a tutorial on making a cute little wood sled in miniature.

 

Supplies needed:

1. craft sticks (Tongue depressor, coffee stirrer, popsicle stick thin, tiny dowels)
2. glue
3. exacto knife
4. sand paper
5. stain
6. gloss
7. trim for rope
8. something round to bend the wood runners around.  I used a jewerly wire jig.
9. patience

 

 

 

Start with cutting one of the coffee stirrers (measure 1/4 wide by 5 3/4″ long) in half.  Take your time and start with a light score and continue scoring lightly until it cuts through. These will be the runners.

Cut a few in case some break.  Put on a small pan of water and drop the pieces into the water.  Bring to a boil for 10 minutes and turn off heat.  Then let the wood soak over night.  I was impatient and didn’t let them soak for a long enough time.   So my wood wanted to split.

Here’s a picture of the wood runners put on the jewerly wire jig to dry.

Before I had a jewerly wire jig, I used 3/4″ dowels to bend the runners around and tied to hold the shape until they dried.

Let them dry completely.  If you use the metal jewelry jig, you can put the runners in the oven on low heat to speed up the drying.

Cut the following pcs from the thin popsicle sticks for your slats.

Notice on the above pcs you keep the rounded end.

Glue the 1 7 /16 and 1 1/4 pieces into a square. This is the beginning of the brace of the sled.

 

With the shorter pieces being inset just a little.   Let Dry.

Next cut two  5/8′ squares

Cut Diagonally.  You will have four pieces.

Glue onto the longer pieces as follows:

and then the other side

Here comes a tricky part.  Cut a small piece to fit inbetween the diagonals like a bridge and glue into place.  It’s kind of  a trial and error to fit them.  Do both sides and dry completely.

When your runners are completely dry take them off the jig.

I have some splitting, so I have to fill, clamp ,dry and sand to get them more even.

After drying, glue the brace to the runners.

Try to get them equal distance on both runners.

Glue your slats like the above picture and let dry.

Sand Sand Sand  and more sanding.

I made tiny holes to mimmick nails on the slats and cut a brace out of the tiny dowels to glue between the runners at the front.  This is where you will tie your rope.

You can now finish your sled as you wish.  I used raw sienna acrylic paint mix with gel medium to creat a wood stain and then sprayed on a gloss finish.  This is where the handy grabbing tool works great for holding the sled to spray the gloss finish.

Love to hear about how your sled turned out.

Tina

Merry Christmas!