Handmade Wood Optimus Prime Toy (it transforms!)

Being a child of the 80s, I’m a big fan of the Transformers. As a young parent I still had a number of my original toys as my kids got into the series. It is one of my dearest memories; watching the cartoon with my kids as they played with those same toys.

I’ve made wood toy cars and wood toy robots, but not both at the same time. The cars could be stood up on end and be made into a “robot”, and the robots could be rearranged to make a “vehicle.” But I never got around to making a transforming robot vehicle.

UNTIL NOW!

It took well more than a solid week of work and more computer modeling than I’ve ever done for something so small, but it was all worth it. The Kids followed along with the construction eagerly and were thrilled with the results!

All the wood colors are natural. The “red” is cherry. The “chrome” is maple. The “blue” is walnut. Some accents were colored with a wood burner – notably the outline of the cab windows and the tires. (I’ll have much more about the construction in a following post.)

I tried best to stick to the original measurements, but some dimensions had to be adjusted. The plastic of the original allows for more compact joints. All of my joints are magnets that can only be so small.

The feet were one of the last components to be fully worked out. I thought they would be straight forward. I was wrong. Four different types had to be made until I tweaked all the bugs (see more in the making of post here).

I carved the head from walnut. The light colored wood is some really thin and really tiny maple which had to be applied with a tweezer. The eyes were colored with a wood burner. It sits on a little square of cherry which also houses the magnet that holds the head on top.