by Ardeana Hamlin
of The Weekly Staff
OLD TOWN — “I can’t make anything simple,” said Lin Randall, 80, of Old Town as he pointed out intricate details of a fire engine he had crafted from pine, oak and mahogany — the fully functioning ladder, the turning of the turret the ladder is mounted on and the interior of the cab. At last count his list contained 35 different to-scale models of wooden vehicles he has made, including a train engine, well digger which he custom made for a customer whose husband is a well driller, golf cart, dump truck, cement mixer, crane, bucket truck, grader, oil truck, ambulance, excavator complete with working a cleated tracks (or lags), and a 1951 Ford pickup truck. These vehicles are not meant for the sandbox. They are meant to be presentation pieces, or for collectors seeking a piece of art to display in home or office. One customer, the owner of a construction company, purchased an excavator for an employee, an excavator operator, who was soon to retire.
“There’s not a nail in any of it,” Randall said. “It’s all glued or doweled.
Although he has a business card — Big Boys Toys — Randall still considers himself a hobbyist. He began making toy vehicles for children, and dollhouses 42 years ago. He and his wife Jo, who have been married 60 years, have seven children, 15 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren. “The dollhouse had windows that opened and electric lights,” Randall said.
As for the vehicles he now makes, he said, “Every part is crafted by hand to scale.”
The vehicles are made according to blueprints he purchases from the Toys and Joys company in Lynden, Washington. “I’m on a first-name basis with Toys and Joys,” Randall laughed.
The vehicle Randall most enjoys creating — right down to wooden tires complete with treads, gas can in a holder on the rear bumper and a spade strapped by the curve of the driver’s side — is a WW War II vintage Jeep. “I spend more time on making the wheels than I do on the entire Jeep,” he said. The treads on the wheels are one of the details that takes a lot of time. Each tread cut has to be made separately on an angle to replicate an actual vintage Jeep tire. “Men will see this, recognize it right away and tell me they drove one just like it in World War II,” Randall said. “I love the challenge. It’s so detailed.”
Randall uses a bandsaw router, drill press, lathe and table saw to create his one-of-a-kind vehicles. No two are alike because he mixes and matches the wood he uses, primarily, pine, oak and mahogany, but also cherry and poplar. He buys the pine locally. The oak was given to him when a tree had to be cut down. He buys small pieces of mahogany from Owen Gray and Son, 300 Chamberlain St. in Brewer.
The seeds of Randall’s interest in woodworking were planted when he was a boy. “Carpenter work always came easy to me,” he said. As a 10-year-old, he built a camp a workshop behind his grandmother’s house. Then, with money he earned mowing lawns — receiving 25 cents or 50 cents, depending on the size of the lawn — he bought model airplane kits made of balsa wood. “I had them a strung on a wire across the ceiling,” he said.
Randall said he was one of the original drivers hired by United Parcel Service in 1967. He worked for that company for 23 years. After that, he worked part-time for 16 years at Birmingham Funeral Home in Old Town.
Randall doesn’t dare to estimate how many wooden vehicles, including children’s toys, he has made over the years, but figures it must be hundreds.
But Randall also has another interest that has been with him since 1973 when he got his pilot’s license — and that is flying. “I think that interest all started with building those toy model airplanes,” he said. In the mid 1980s he built a two-seater floatplane, from a kit, of lightweight cloth sprayed and painted in a five-step process to give it strength and durability. He started working on the plane in an upstairs room, then he had to take out a window to get it into the garage where he finished building it. Then it was moved out into the dooryard so he could install the planes wings.
These days, he is one of a five-member club who get together weekly. They are building a plane.
Randall also has turned his interest to making chess pieces and boards from wood. he has perfected a way of cutting a fully-formed chess piece from one block of wood. After a series of cuts, the block comes apart, and there it is, a fully formed chess piece. He has the gift of being able to look at a block of wood and seeing the chess piece entire in the wood block.
As for his wooden vehicles, those are sold only at the annual University of Maine Homecoming Craft Fair and Show, held each October, or directly from Randall.
For information about Big Boys Toys and the vehicles Randall makes, call him at 827-4249.