Welcome to CrunchGear’s old-timey corner of fun. First, read this for a bit of charming reminiscence:

When I was a kid growing up on a farm, most boys carried a knife to school and usually sharpened their own pencils. Getting a nice smooth point on a pencil was a matter of pride for most of us. It’s a sad comment on today’s society that kids carrying knives to school are now considered criminals.

Those were the days, right? Anyway, Dr. Terry M. Trier shows us all how to make a ball and cage, an old timey toy, a whimsy, that consists of a cage with a ball trapped inside it. How is it made? Well, you have to carve the ball and the cage out of one piece, which is pretty tricky.

You basically whittle down a block of wood and cut out everything that doesn’t belong. Dr. Trier does a better job of explaining it but it looks like a nice, quiet weekend project, just a whittling away on the old back yard bench.

Incidentally my favorite whittling knife is the French Opinel. It has an edge like a shark.