Thread: Australian wood for toys?

Try rosewood, red cedar, kauri pine, huon pine, tas myrtle. general furniture softwoods, not hardwoods
Greg

whats wrong with plain old pine. glues well,easy to stain and you can get it anywhere. Its all I use for my toys and some of them have been in childcare centres for over 20yrs.
Phil.

Interesting discussion.
As Phil said, I mainly use pine but also recycle whatever timber I can get my hands on;
normally secondhand & clean it up as it's too expensive to see thrown out.
Cheers, crowie

PS - Especially if it's free at things like council cleanups!

Sometimes the solution is staring right back at you.

I didn't realise I was being a timber snob. I looked at the prices and availability of some of the timbers suggested. While they were beautiful woods that would make great product, their price was astronomical.

Thinking over the other posts, I remembered I had a piece of pine shelving stuck at the back of the wood pile. I dragged it out and cut a couple of pieces on the CNC machine.

The cut surface finish was as good or better than the Tassie Oak. After a couple of quick passes on the sandpaper, the surface finish was pleasing to the touch. There were no splintery corners.

I gave the pieces to my 2yo lab rat. He bashed them around for a day and they're as good looking today as they were 24 hours ago.

I'll leave a final decision for a couple of weeks more play, but I think Radiata Pine might be my best option.

Oh, one comment on sourcing. The reason for the "Australian" comment in the source was that I want to be confident in the origin of the timber. I'm seeing lots of toys made from "rubberwood", which I suspect to be the pesticide-laden rubbish from Asian rubber plantations. I want to be sure the recipients of my toys aren't the subject of Chinese poisoning stories in the nightly news.

I favour pine but also use:
- recycled timber floorboards (solid timber ones - picked up cheap on ebay - but no outbidding me!)
- some of the nice woods mentioned by Greg (I have even bought some from him at very reasonable prices) for decorative / contrasting pieces
- branches from trees (bluegum, jacaranda, spotted gum) but these usually have very specific uses. In saying this, I have mad toys for a small treehouse from branches and turned some bluegum and jacaranda.

cheers

Mick