So I was thinking of building my sons a wooden rifle.

[GatorFarmer]

The older boy Liam, he's three. He likes to pretend to shoot at the squirrels and birds with his toy cap pistol, modeled after a SAA. His brother Brody has a better stance, but both have gotten very good quite quickly at spotting squirrels, birds and other small animals. They even spot all those little green lizards.

Thus I was thinking about a trip to Loewe's and getting a wood plank, a dowel, some paint, and maybe a door bolt and assembling a wooden rifle for them to play with. I thought that I could perhaps scrounge up an old or cast off scope and mount it on the "rifle" (tape, glue, whatever would hold it in place, not like it has to be recoil proof). I'm not that handy with wood since shop class was a long time ago, but I think that this might be within the realm of the doable with simple handtools.

(Most mass market toy guns, even when they can be found, they simply aren't that durable.)

Anyone ever build anything like this or have any plans or tips for such a project?

 

[rburg]

Yep, when I was about 10 years old. Dad gave me the stock off an old Mauser. He cut down the length a few inches. It was just a bare stock at first. Then I found a piece of pipe we glued into the stock, so I had a barrel. But it needed a bolt for the action (the barrel went all the way back to become the action, with a pipe cap on it. Probably the only purchased part of my gun. Then dad found an already bent bolt off a truck. So he drilled the "action" and glued the bolt in. It was passable from my viewpoint, and my friends I played with. It was a good enough toy that a local cop wanted to see it one day.

He gave it a good once over, then told me to have fun with it.

 

[Old 44 Guy]

During WW2 when I was growing up we made our guns out of redwood, pine, balsa or whatever we could find. We used a coping saw & a brace & bit to fashion a pretty good look a like to a Colt .45. Every kid in the neighbor hood had one. We played Marines & Ja...s. Uhuh. WAR. Almost got kicked out of here. Sorry. Dug foxholes & had a grand old time. Came home dusty & dirty, our Mom's raised all sorts of hell but that continued 'till we found out rubber guns. That lasted till we found out with the spring out of a clothes pin we had match guns. I mean they could shoot a lit kitchen match into the kid next door. That didn't last long either. The war ended when I was 14 & discovered girls.

 

[Onomea]

Yep. When my oldest boy was about that age, I got pine board and drew a rifle on it using pencil and a straight edge. Drew a little loop/bump for the trigger guard. I used a keyhole saw to saw the rifle out of the board, and a a simple door bolt, brass, the kind you used to find on the inside of bathroom doors, as the bolt. (Screws on with maybe six short screws or so.) Hand sanded it. I used my hand drill to drill out the trigger guard, and I used those eye screws -- a screw with a loop on one end like a screen door lock hook slips into -- as the front and rear sights.

In a pinch you could make that with a Swiss Army knife.

My oldest got a fair amount of milage out of it, and then passed it down to his little brother a couple years later.

 

[arch stanton]

My grandpa made me one that was just a piece of 3/4" plywood cut in the shape of a stock and a dowel rod painted black for the barrel.It killed many a bad guy when i was young.

 

[walnutred]

I've made wooden guns for my kids using dowels and scrap wood. When I was about 8 my dad made me a wooden Thompson. Used a shortened coffee can for a drum.

 

[charlie sherrill]

When I was a kid one of my neighbors was in the National Guard at Camp Shelby. He would bring home M1 carbine stocks for us kids. An old piece of pipe and a roll of electrical tape later and we had guns. I wish I still had some of those stocks.

 

[novalty]

My brother used to make some when we were growing up, and would glue a clothes-pin above the "trigger area" and notch the end of the barrel, then shoot elastic bands.

 

[reddogge]

Instead of building one I'd try to find an old Paris-Dunn training rifle, a very good copy of a Model 1903.

 

[venomballistics]

The older boy Liam, he's three. He likes to pretend to shoot at the squirrels and birds with his toy cap pistol, modeled after a SAA. His brother Brody has a better stance, but both have gotten very good quite quickly at spotting squirrels, birds and other small animals. They even spot all those little green lizards.

Thus I was thinking about a trip to Loewe's and getting a wood plank, a dowel, some paint, and maybe a door bolt and assembling a wooden rifle for them to play with. I thought that I could perhaps scrounge up an old or cast off scope and mount it on the "rifle" (tape, glue, whatever would hold it in place, not like it has to be recoil proof). I'm not that handy with wood since shop class was a long time ago, but I think that this might be within the realm of the doable with simple handtools.

(Most mass market toy guns, even when they can be found, they simply aren't that durable.)

Anyone ever build anything like this or have any plans or tips for such a project?

yup .. lots of em.
my cousins and myself were raised in the middle of the charismatic movement in all its tie dyed glory.
we didnt get toy guns ... but we DID have access to our grandfathers extensive workshop where we made our own.
M16's 1911's p-38's P-08's we had interpretations of oh so many pieces ... some with working parts, and some with not so working parts and still others that just didnt work... and a few that might have worked a bit "too well" as our craftsmanship allowed.

Man .. thank you for the memories

 

[diamonback68]

Heck, when I was a kid you could buy all the replica wood rifles and metal cap guns you wanted from the dime store....cheap. Didn't need to make 'em except the rubber guns.

 

[Iggy]

We made our own rifles. Went to a one room school during grade school. Rode a horse to school. One teacher and four boys when we reached maximum capacity.

We buried our guns at the end of afternoon recess in a badger hole in a dirt bank so Stalin couldn't come in and steal them overnight.

 

[diamonback68]

We buried our guns at the end of afternoon recess in a badger hole in a dirt bank so Stalin couldn't come in and steal them overnight.

Ah yes, that's back when "The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming".

 

[Joe in SC]

Several years ago I noticed that everytime my grandson visited he always ended up playing with an old 30 cal. carbine stock I had laying around. The stock was basically a ruined cast-off that someone had drilled holes in and treated very badly.

I had a hardwood dowel in the shop so I mounted it to the stock with a couple wood screws and some epoxy. A discarded simmons scope was mounted in old weaver rings, bases were glued on with jb weld and grandson was in hog heaven! With out a doubt, his favorite weapon!

 

[venomballistics]

as I think of it. if you can trust the kids with tools, have em build their own toy guns.
Meanwhile, as you are floating around gunshows, check out the scrap heaps for a 22 in need of some love.
when you see some good developments on a stock for a toy ... confiscate it. let the kid crank out a few more to hone his craft a bit more. then present the barreled action and the confiscated stock.
thats pretty much the back story of my first rifle
an arm earned in this way never has an equal in the eyes of its owner.

its food for thought later on in their lives

 

[feralmerril]

I well remember a uncle comeing home from the war. He lived with us. He dumped out his war bag. A P-08, a P-38, a P-35 and a little browning auto .32.
Later that night when the excitement died down, dad told me to pick one out. I picked out the radom. Dad traced it on a board and sawed it out. He also done other stuff to it and it looked pretty decent. I remember takeing it to school, 1st or 2nd grade and showing it off. Some of the older boys goaded me into showing my "Pisso" to the teacher.
Guess they were trying to get me in trouble not with the gun, but the way I pronounced it. Many years later I owned all but the walther P-38. He had sold that one. Just before he died he gave me the luger. He had mental problems and dad took his guns. I was sitting with him in his garage. He reached in a tire and pulled out a bundel of rags and pulled out the luger and holster. He said here, this is one your pa didnt get. It`s yours! Not too much later he gassed himself in the garage. He had open heart surgery when it was a new process in 1972. He had a stroke on the table and it affected him mentaly. He had never married, ran a junk yard besides his day job. Really the war had changed him. He was the same uncle I have wrote about before that was with the glidders in the 82nd AB. That luger later got stolen from me along with some other fine guns. Along with many other decorations he had two purple hearts.