I really like some of the classic VW cars, so that's the style i decided to make.
The first step was to get side views of all the car I wanted to make.
I found some side shots on google and took them into a CAD program to trace round them and create the templates for cutting. Any photo editing software will work, as long as you can scale the image and draw round it.
I printed the templates out at the correct size and glued them onto the wood.
I used 38mm x 63mm pine
Using a scroll saw I cut round the outside of the templates.
To do the windows of the cars I drilled through the centre with a drill bit that was slightly larger than the saw blade. The threaded it through the hole and reinstalled it in the scroll saw and cut the windows out, repeating this for each window.
When the design was cut out I used a drill bit the size of my axles (we will get into that later) to drill a hole all the way through the cars.
I found these nice wheels online that have a lovely rubber O ring as a tyre and I really liked the look.
The hole in each wheel was slightly too small for my axel so I drilled them out slightly to fit.
After drilling all the holes I painted all the wheels white to give them a little bit of a whitewall tyre vibe. I took the O rings off before painting.
I think they look really great after painting.
The cut cars had sharp corners/edges so I went about sanding all of them to clean up the cut edge and the corners.
Using a flapper sanding bit in my drill I took the sharp corners off all the outer edges of the cars. I used a smaller flapper sanding bit in a rotary tool to do the inner sections, windows, and tight corners. Then I used some sand paper to make all the flat surfaces clean and free from any cutter marks or splinters.
The axels for the wooden cars are binding posts or Chicago screws. I got some that were long enough to go through 2 wheels 2 washers and the body of the car.
The posts unscrew on one end, so I placed a wheel then a nylon washer on the long post, then put that through the car. A nylon washer and the second wheel then when screwing in the other end of the post I added some super glue to make sure they won't come undone.
The wheels look great on the finished cars.
I could have finished there. But as these were going to be a gift for my son I wanted to make a box.
I found a nice card box with a flap lid online.
I placed a false floor of thin hardboard with some wheel holes cut into it, these were cut using the scroll saw, they were big enough to allow the cars wheels to drop into them and have the cars sit on the axles so they didn't roll around in the box.
I used a vinyl cutter to make a little graphic for the front of the box, along with my sons name (which I have censored)
I stuck this to the top of the box.
I also made a little pull here label and a VW logo, just for a bit of fun.
The four car models I went for are.
The Karmann Ghia. The Beetle.
The MK2 Golf. The Split Screen Camper van.
Thank you for looking.
If you have any questions please leave a comment and i will do my best to answer any questions.
Also if you like this build please share it, it means alot to see people sharing my work.
