Canadian Teacher Wins Wooden Toys Challenge Sponsored by Woodcraft and Instructables

A British Columbia shop teacher is the Grand Prize winner in the Wooden Toys Challenge sponsored by Woodcraft and Instructables for a toy truck built as part of a class lesson.

“We’ve been building Monster Trucks in my middle school woodshop for a number of years,” Chilliwack resident Steve Cecchi wrote in his how-to instructions on Instructables.com. “This is a great project that challenges students to be able to follow a long and detailed set of instructions while learning some new techniques (like cutting tire treads on a table saw). It’s also a great project that encourages creativity, as the look of the finished truck is only limited by a student’s imagination.”

As Grand Prize winner, Cecchi will receive a DeWalt Scroll Saw Model DW788 donated by Woodcraft and an Instructables prize pack including a robot t-shirt or stainless steel mug. A woodworker since high school, Cecchi has been teaching almost 25 years, most of the time in middle school.
 
To “fire up” his Vedder Middle School Applied Skills students and “get them excited about building their own Monster Truck,” Cecchi said he builds a couple of sample trucks. He entered one of these sample vehicles in the Wooden Toys Challenge.

The four-step Monster Truck project ends with accessorizing, which Cecchi describes as the “fun part,” where students get to show their creativity by adding accessories such as headlamps and grills, license plates, bumpers, side mirrors, fenders, running boards and roll bars.

Runners Up

Twenty runners-up were also selected, and each one will receive a WoodRiver eight-piece Detail Carving Tool Set from Woodcraft and an Instructables prize pack with a robot T-shirt or stainless steel mug. Their projects ranged from a Flintstones Car aka Flintmobile to an educational Interactive Calendar, a Toy Lawn Mower, a Modular Wooden Knight’s Castle, and a Three-In-One Building Block Train Set for toddlers.

To see pictures and how-to instructions for all 21 projects, visit http://www.instructables.com/contest/woodentoys.

Runners-up are: Brian Clarke, Bellingham, Massachusetts; Art Mulder, Ontario, Canada; Manuel Masciotta, Rho, Michigan; Dale Sarauer, Saskatchewan, Canada; Ana Labrincha, Setubal, Portugal; Bruce Hay, British Columbia, Canada; Adam Gabbert, Manteca, California; Tomas Szeqczuk, Podkarpackie, Poland; Ramón Muñiz del Valle, Ponteverda, Spain; Michael McCrory, Burke, Virginia; Simon Laikie, Niederosterreich, Austria; Carl Jacobson, no address available; Jon Simma, Norrbotten, Sweden; Sarah Sterman, Berkeley, California; Andy Smith, Janesville, Wisconsin; Annie Adams, Zwijndrect, The Netherlands; Michael J Rybak, Baltimore, Maryland; Niki Giada, Pesaro, Italy; Herbert Emmanuel, Nord, France; and Connie Yu, Berkeley, California.

“Congratulations to the Wooden Toys Challenge winners – what an intriguing group of toys from creators all over the world,” Vince Grlovich, Woodcraft vice president for sale and marketing, said.

Wooden toy projects were accepted from Dec. 5, 2016 to Jan. 9, 2017. Once entered, each toy project appeared on Instructables.com, and members could vote for any entry. When the contest closed, a panel of judges, including Instructables staff members and members of the Instructables community, rated the finalists. The averages of the ratings determined the winners, which were announced on the Instructables contest page.

Described as The World’s Biggest Show and Tell, Instructables.com attracts 30 million plus viewers each month to its web-based documentation platform that allows passionate creators to share what they do and how they do it, as well as learn from and collaborate with others. Besides offering a place to showcase and store new projects, Instructables also sponsors ongoing competitions.