A Craftsman Holds Up His Work: The Moment a Toy Is Finished

The Inspection

I wear my old white workshop coat every day — it is cotton drill, heavy enough to last, and by now so thoroughly seasoned with linseed oil and wood dust that it has taken on a colour somewhere between cream and amber. When a toy is finished — truly finished, oiled, waxed, dry — I put on my glasses (I need them for close work now; twenty years of peering at joint lines will do that) and I hold the piece up to the north-facing window of the workshop.

North light is what artists use for a reason. It is consistent, flat, and unforgiving. It throws no shadows of its own and does not flatter. A surface that looks acceptable under the warm tungsten light of the workshop lamp will show every trace of a plane track, every slightly raised grain fibre, every tiny scratch in north light. This is the light I want for final inspection.

I rotate the toy slowly, looking at every surface in turn. I am looking for several things simultaneously, and after twenty years, the looking has become a single integrated perception rather than a checklist — but if I were to describe it as a checklist, it would go something like this.

What I Look For

First: surface consistency. The finish should look the same everywhere — the same sheen, the same depth of colour, no patches where the oil has soaked in more deeply because the grain is end-on, no runs or drips at the corners. Linseed oil on linden is extraordinarily beautiful when it is right — the wood darkens to a warm honey colour, the grain becomes vivid, and there is a depth to the surface that looks almost liquid. When it is wrong — when the oil has been applied too thick, or not rubbed in enough, or the surface was not clean before oiling — the finish looks flat and dead. You can feel the difference as well as see it.

Second: joint quality. I hold the toy up and look along every joint line. Any gap, any step, any misalignment will be visible in north light. A perfect joint has no gap and no step — the two surfaces are continuous, as if they had grown that way. I also feel each joint with my fingertip, running it along the line. A gap you cannot see, you can sometimes feel. And vice versa: sometimes the eye is fooled by colour contrast between two pieces of wood, but the finger knows there is no step.

Third: geometry. Is it square? Does it sit flat? Are the wheels, if there are wheels, all the same diameter, all running true, all at the same height from the ground? I set the toy on a known-flat surface and look for rocking. Even a tenth of a millimetre of twist in the base will cause rocking, and a rocking toy looks unfinished even if every other aspect of it is perfect.

The Feeling

When everything passes, when I rotate the toy in the north light and cannot find a fault, there is a feeling that I do not have a good word for in Czech or in English. It is not pride exactly — pride feels like it is about you, and this feeling is not about me. It is more like a recognition. The wood has done what I asked it to do. The joints are where they should be. The surface is what it should be. The thing exists, and it is right.

I have made perhaps four thousand toys in my working life. This feeling has not become smaller with repetition. If anything it has become larger, because I understand better now what it took to get here — how many things could have gone wrong, how many decisions I made correctly, how much the quality of the timber mattered, how much the sharpness of the tools mattered, how much the patience to stop and re-do a joint that was almost right but not quite right mattered. The finished toy is the sum of all of those decisions.

What Happens Next

After the inspection, I write the toy's details in a notebook — the wood species, where I bought the timber and from which sawmill, the joinery technique, the finish, the approximate date of completion, and a small sketch. I have been doing this since my third year of making. The notebooks now fill half a shelf in the workshop. Somewhere in them is a record of almost everything I have made.

Then the toy goes to the shelf by the window, where it will sit until it leaves the workshop. I never put a toy away in a box immediately after finishing it. I want to live with it for a few days first, see it in different lights, morning and evening, to make sure that my initial judgement was correct. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes I pick it up three days later and see something I missed on the day. Better to see it now than to have the person who receives it see it first.