A very slight half cut is made along the dotted line, so that part of the leg, K, may be bent straight when H is gummed to the side of the wheelbarrow.
Fig. 191 shows another method of making the legs. A half cut is made along the dotted line, H is bent back at right angles to K and is gummed to the side of the barrow. The slant of the dotted line is the same as the slant of the sides of A in Fig. 186.
This toy could also be made of three-ply wood with a fret-saw. The sides and bottom would then have to be cut in three separate pieces.
Children as young as seven can begin woodwork, but the little strength they possess for sawing makes it necessary to give them prepared wood, called stripwood. There is no need, however, to begin woodwork in too great a hurry, so many are the toys which the children can make with match-boxes, corks, paper and files, and the more familiar the child gets with his ruler and with simple measurements, the better able he is to saw to advantage. Woodwork may well be postponed to the age of eight or nine, then the child can begin to measure accurately and be introduced by degrees to the mysteries of set-squares, try-squares and T-squares.
The following tools are necessary when beginning easy woodwork with children from seven to ten years of age; other tools, described in Part II, can be added as the children advance in age and in ambition:
1. Bench-hooks, against which children can press their strips of wood and hold them firmly. A simple one is shown in Fig. 192. C is a piece of hard wood about 8 inches square, A is a strip of hard wood against which the child can hold her wood, B is a strip of wood that presses against the table.
3. A brass-back saw with a blade about 6 inches long.
5. Files--these are very cheap. Some must be round; the others should be 8-inch files, 1/2 cut (one safe edge).
Other materials required will be liquid glue, sand-paper, nails--useful ones are 3/4 and 1/2 veneer pins.
With regard to wood, children as young as seven should be given prepared lengths (schools are commonly supplied with the so-called satin walnut, machine-planed, see next chapter), from which they can saw portions for making simple objects, such as picture frames, ladders, gates, objects which consist of different lengths of wood nailed across each other.