Scented Skunk animated pull toy

After getting David Wakefield's book on patterns for animated wood toys, I am building the ones I find most interesting to me.

The Scented Skunk uses a cam driven by the back wheels to make the tail go up and down.

I used maple for the light colored wood and walnut for the dark colored wood.

This is a relatively simple animated toy to build. The only issue I had was an error in the pattern in the book. The geometry is wrong for the bottom of the two maple pieces on the outside of the tail. Because I had found errors in this book on a previous toy, I thought about how to check the tail movement before the laminated glue up, but I did not see how to check it. I was able to remove enough material with the Dremel 1/2" drum sander to make it work ok.

To see my Trials & Tribulations of building this project, see my woodworking web site.


Still pictures do not do these designs justice, you need to see and hear the model in action…….so I made a Youtube video:


I have some pretty green 1/4" macrame string on order to replace the plain Jane white string shown in the video.

The little ones in the family should really enjoy playing with this one!

Thanks