Woodworking toy truck maker designs his own product

Piece by piece, they soon all come together like a puzzle. The end results are quality hand-crafted wooden toy trucks, tractors, trains and more that look like they just came off an assembly line of a large manufacturing company.

And to think David Myrvik has only been crafting these vehicles out of woods for four years. “I've always liked to work with wood,” said the 78-year-old retired construction worker/carpenter/electrician.

“And I would get a lot of woodworking magazines and make some of the things that were in them.”

“But a lot of the things in the woodworking magazines were so complicated that I started designing them myself. And as I made them, I would improve some things or change some angles to make them look better.”

Myrvik’s toy vehicle projects began when his wife, Joanne, was at a vendor show a few years ago and came across a wooden toy truck and took a picture of it, figuring it would be something her husband might like to build.

“I made one from that picture and it's actually turned out pretty good,” David said.

“And that's how it all got started.” Myrvik also takes a mental note of a certain vehicle he might pass by on the road and use that image later to make a toy version of it.

A close inspection of the doors on the wood-crafted semi-trucks reveals small imprinted designs.

Myrvik first points out two in particular.

“This one is Häagen Dazs and this one is Schwan's,” he said, revealing the logos from each company imprinted onto thin pieces of light-colored wood.

“Do you know where these are from?” he asks with a smile.

“They are actually cut out from ice cream sticks and I glued them on the door of my (toy) trucks.” Myvrik now uses a Star of David on the vehicles he makes in reference to his first name.

“I use walnut, purpleheart, cherry, oak, fir and some ash,” Myrvik responds when asked about the various colored wood in his many projects.

Purpleheart wood comes from South and Central America, as well as Africa. It is quite costly and is only available for purchase in a limited number of locations in the United States.

Myrvik purchased a piece of the purpleheart in the state of Washington. It’s an extremely dense and water-resistant wood, and is ranked one of the hardest and stiffest of the woods in the world.

“It’s even harder than walnut,” he said. “But it’s such a pretty wood and I like using it on my wood trucks and some other things.”

Among the wood toy vehicles he’s made at an approximate 1/32 scale are semi-trucks, fork lifts, car carriers, skid loaders, bulldozers, logging trucks, side dumpers, oil tankers, tractors, and train engines with accompanying oil-tanker cars.

The double-deck car carrier Myrvik designed and built is his personal favorite.

The carrier holds six cars with grooved wheel bases to hold the cars in place on each level. The top level folds flats like a real one and the cars can be driven up and put in place.

“Everyone asks me how long it takes me to make one of these toys,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve never really cared to know how long it takes to make them.”

“I don’t work on them at one time from start to finish. I’ll make a bunch of the same parts and then eventually put them together. I would guess it would take a couple of days to put one together.”

Myrvik also puts a finishing coat of tung oil on each of the vehicles, giving them a shine while also allowing the natural beauty of the wood colors to come out. The wooden forklift he made is also finely detailed. It includes a wooden driver sitting in the seat.

The forks moves up and down like a real one and can actually slide into scaled wooden pallets that Myrvik carefully constructed.

And his scaled logging trucks appear like actual ones found at logging camps in northern Minnesota. To make his toy trucks appear to be hauling logs, Myrvik uses branches cut from trees in his own yard. All these details are done by hand.

And to make it even more intriguing is that Myrvik can construct these quality toys despite missing two digits on his right hand (he is right-handed), while a portion of his middle finger is now acting as his thumb.

“I lost half of my middle finger on my right hand in the service in 1963,” said Myrvik, who is slightly uncomfortable talking about it.

“Then I lost my (index) finger and thumb in an industrial accident at work in 1983.” A surgeon in Sioux Falls removed the remaining portion of Myrvik’s middle finger and attached it to the area where he thumb once was, giving him a makeshift thumb in order to better grip and carry things.

“I have feelings in all of them,” he said while simultaneously wiggling the two remaining fingers and partial thumb on his right hand for emphasis. Although Myrvik’s wooden toys are impressive, his talents hardly ends there.

He has also hand-crafted beautiful furniture pieces, rigged up a unique ladder-and-pulley system to reach stored items in the rafters of his garage, and much more. It’s obvious he has a unique gift for figuring out how to make things work that most people would find difficult.

The toy vehicles cars and even some wooden games were initially made by Myrvik as Christmas gifts to his grandchildren.

He estimates that he has made “around 75” toy vehicles in all. He has sold a few of them at various places such as Boxelder Bug Days.

And he has donated some to fundraisers, including a semi-truck and a logging truck to the Chocolate Affair benefit for the library this past February.

David and Joanne have four children — Jonathan, Daniel, Debbie and Jessica — as well as 12 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

“I don't get out and sell the toy trucks and other vehicles that much because it's hard to set a price on them,” he said.

“There is a lot of work in them, but people don't realize that.”

You might not realize the amount of work that goes into one of Myrvik’s impressive wooden vehicles.

But you sure can appreciate the beauty and fine craftsmanship that has gone into each of them.