Homemade Toy Wooden Gun Tutorial

Trying to look like serious Minutemen.

My children begged to buy wooden toy guns on our trip to the Springfield Armory earlier this fall. While supporting a National Park is a worthwhile use of our money, doing so at $20 for each gun (times 4 children) was a little too much for my hubby's frugal nature.

He declared he would make each of our children a homemade wooden toy gun. Last month he made good on his promise. He also included our children in the process.

Here is our homemade wooden toy gun tutorial (these make a great gift for the little boy in your life!):



Step One:
To make 4 rifles and 4 revolvers you need one 12' long -  2x6 and four 48" long - 3/4" dowels.  

Step Two: 
Draw your gun template on cardboard and cut out.

Step Three:
Cut 2x6 into 4 equal lengths.

Step Four:
Trace cardboard templates onto 2x6 pieces.

Step Five:
Carefully cut out toy guns. Drill holes in trigger area and use to carefully cut larger hole.

Step Six:
Fill any holes with wood putty and sand, sand, and sand some more.

Step Seven:
Mark center line on the top of the gun and carefully use a router to cut a groove for the dowel barrel. Or you could stop here and call it good.

Step Eight:

Cut dowels to desired length. Sand, sand, and sand. Cover groove with painter's tape and spray paint the stock brown. Leaving one side plain, spray paint the barrels (dowels) black. Repeat paint until you have the desired finish.

Step Nine:
Run a bead of wood glue down the groove and position dowels in groove.

After a couple of weekends of working on the project with your children you should have homemade toy wooden guns that look like this:

My children love playing with their toy guns!! We've reenacted the Revolutionary War and been held up by bank robbers many times. In fact, one cute little bank robber (whose gun is taller than he is!) woke me up last week by pointing his gun at my bed and yelling "stick 'em up!"

This was a simple project that my husband had a lot of fun working on with our children. Do you have any homemade toys at your house?

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