Wheels for rolling stock may be made from cans or the can lids. Small adhesive tape boxes make excellent headlights or searchlights and also pilot houses for tiny tug boats. Bottle caps, thumb-tack boxes, and the small screw tops of olive or cooking oil cans suggest head, side and tail lights for toy automobiles, and many other things.
Aside from the pleasure derived from the actual making of tin can toys, perhaps the greatest satisfaction lies in the fact that you are using material usually thrown away—making something out of nothing.
And so this book is offered to tinkers by a tinker with the hope that they may get some of the pleasure out of it that he has had in writing it.
Edward Thatcher.
Woodstock, Ulster County, New York.
September, 1919.
EXTRACT FROM A LETTER WRITTEN TO THE AUTHOR BY A FORMER PUPIL
MRS. CLYDE M. MYERS
RECONSTRUCTION AIDE, DIRECTOR OF THE RED CROSS WORK SHOP FOR PATIENTS AT NEUROLOGICAL BASE HOSPITAL 117, LA FAUCHE, HAUTE MARNE, FRANCE