SAN MARCOS: College wood shop celebrates 10 years of making toys

Four Saturdays of sawing, sanding and finishing yield hundreds of toys for charity

By TOM PFINGSTEN - Staff Writer | Saturday, November 22, 2008 6:05 PM PST ∞

SAN MARCOS ---- It has been a decade since the Palomar College woodworking shop began turning out toys for charitable groups, and in those 10 years instructors estimate that their students have produced at least 4,000 of the old-fashioned wooden trinkets.

On Saturday, the class was putting the finishing touches on another batch of several hundred toys, which are made assembly-line-style inside the expansive wood shop at the northwest corner of the campus.

Woodworking department head Chris Feddersohn said the annual class ---- consisting of four Saturdays every November ---- combines the standard hands-on lessons with a charitable twist.

"Not only do we give away a lot of toys at Christmastime, but sometimes we have toys that we'll give to emergency centers, or to kids who are in the emergency room," Feddersohn said.

The program is run in conjunction with the San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association, which distributes the Palomar products and an additional 3,000 toys every year to charitable groups such as the Camp Pendleton Family Center and Rady Children's Hospital.

Handmade and custom-finished, the toys are reminiscent of a bygone era, before disposable plastic baubles had replaced sturdy, but simple, playthings made out of wood.

The pieces that the Palomar students produce range from miniature buses with removable passengers to doll cribs and a variety of critters.

"I've worked on a grasshopper, an alligator and a mouse," recalled Barbara Clark, a 77-year-old student who has taken the class seven times and said she plans on repeating it "as long as I'm able."

"I'm not very experienced at all, but I can use a few of the tools. Point me in the right direction," Clark said. "I feel very good about seeing these 500 or 600 toys at the end, and knowing where they're going. It's rewarding."

Instructor Gordon Collinson said the class is a pleasant detour from the standard curriculum that teaches students how to make chairs, desks and musical instruments.

With two classes of 25 students, the toy-making endeavor has a special place in the hearts of many who spend their weekends at the wood shop, said Collinson.

It also teaches students about assembly lines, because each team of three to six students has to make at least 25 copies of their assigned toy.

"Really, it's the production techniques ---- making many pieces of the same part, and each one is interchangeable, just like Henry Ford making cars," Collinson said.

The repetition, in turn, helps students hone their skills one tool at a time, he said.

"What we do hear from the students a lot is something like, 'You know, I've never done a lot of band-saw work before, but cutting out all these butterfly wings, I sure know my way around a band saw now,'" he said. "They get a lot of practice ... and there's a lot of camaraderie. You're working with a team of five people, so there's a lot of banter and that sort of thing."

Jigs and saws and sanders are Collinson's domain, and all of his students leave more proficient with them after a month of sawing and polishing.

The students take a little more than just plain old experience with them, though.

"We have each student pick out a toy to take home to their favorite little person," he said.

Clark said it has been decades since simple wooden toys have been in style with the toy-buying population at large.

"Occasionally, you'll see some like this at a specialty toy store, but the toys you see now are mostly electronic and battery-operated," she said.

But for those who labor to produce a few hundred old-fashioned toys every year at Palomar College, the finished product couldn't be more beautiful.

"These are just old-fashioned wooden toys that have great appeal," Clark said.

Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at (760) 740-3516 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.