| Project by Elizabeth | posted 201 days ago | 855 views | 3 times favorited | 12 comments | ![]() |
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I wanted to make a teether for my son, so I whipped this up today from a scrap piece of maple. I made a second one for a neighbour’s boy of the same age. No finish, but a lot of sanding, raising grain with water and re-sanding.
I ended up hand-sanding the corners to round them sufficiently. I’d rounded the pieces generally with the router, but the corners ended up pretty sharp. The belt sander was too aggressive in taking off material.
I tried to get a good “in use” photo but my model was too distracted.
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12 comments so far
Sandra
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1322 posts in 247 days
#1 posted 201 days ago
Wow, never seen a wooden teether before. Beats having them chew on the crib rails.
-- No, I don't want to buy the pink hammer.
vipond33
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1311 posts in 670 days
#2 posted 201 days ago
I have to laugh at you “raising the grain” as there will be plenty of that going on in use. If you want to make it really interesting for them make the teethers out of a checkerboard of dark and light woods, they’ll stare at it for hours.
Good way to introduce them to the craft. Measure nothing, cut many times!
gene
-- gene@toronto.ontario.canada : dovetail free since '53, critiques always welcome.
Elizabeth
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639 posts in 1315 days
#3 posted 201 days ago
Yeah I figure they will be helping me prepare for future sandings! Mostly I wanted to be sure nothing went wrong when they got wet, particularly for the gift one.
sharad
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1059 posts in 1977 days
#4 posted 201 days ago
Very nice finish of the teether. Is there any other wood than maple for making them?
Sharad
-- “If someone feels that they had never made a mistake in their life, then it means they have never tried a new thing in their life”.-Albert Einstein
Blackie_
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1666 posts in 685 days
#5 posted 201 days ago
Now this is out of my realm as I never had kids but seems like a great idea and they look very nice.
-- Randy - If I'm not on LJ's then I'm making Saw Dust. Please feel free to visit my store location at http://www.facebook.com/randy.blackstock.custom.wood.designs
Elizabeth
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639 posts in 1315 days
#6 posted 200 days ago
Thanks Sharad; I’m not sure. I think I have seen them made of cherry as well, but mostly the ones I’ve seen online have been maple.
Last night my son discovered that the teether is also excellent for banging on other toys; then he got it stuck on a protrusion on the other toy and had to figure out how to get it off. An all-around learning tool!
WoodenFrog
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2364 posts in 1085 days
#7 posted 200 days ago
That’s pretty neat, useful tool!
Nice work!!!
-- Robert B. Sabina, Ohio.....
chrisstef
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#8 posted 200 days ago
Ill be making a bunch of these for my little guy. Hes 10 weeks today and drooling like a faucet. Teeth cant be that far off. Thanks for the inspiration Elizabeth.
-- "there aren’t many hand tools as awe-inspiring as the #8 jointer. I mean, it just reeks of cast iron heft and hubris" - Smitty
Shanem
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98 posts in 638 days
#9 posted 200 days ago
looks good.
what are the dimensions?
Elizabeth
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639 posts in 1315 days
#10 posted 200 days ago
I don’t remember offhand, but the holes are 1 1/2 diameter. The width is whatever the scrap was that I had lying around – I think it was a little over 2 1/2 inches – and I cut them to length after drilling the second hole, just eyeballing to get roughly the same distance between hole and edge on each end.
Eric_S
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#11 posted 200 days ago
Elizabeth, thank you for this post. My wife is pregnant and I’ll be adding this to the list of baby projects to make. Great idea! My wife watched a documentary on plastics a couple months back and now she wants to try and avoid as many plastic toys as possible for our baby when its still teething. Lol, hey, more projects for me so I dont mind. Thanks again and great idea. I like vipond33’s suggestion as well.
-- - Eric Indianapolis, IN
rance
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3856 posts in 1332 days
#12 posted 196 days ago
Nicely done Elizabeth.
Interesting about the plastics Gene. I found out a while back that the wooden teethers are probably better than most through a thread here on LJ. I asked a parent/child educator that deals with these things in her teaching. She said as long as it is BPA-free, then the plastic is considered safe. I did some googling and found What is BPA? Should I be worried about it??
I still like the wooden ones better.
-- Backer boards, stop blocks, build oversized, and never buy a hand plane--
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