Deep in Vermont, a garden-level workshop to rival Santa's
NORWICH, Vt. - As millions of toys were recalled this year, and parents worried that Thomas the Tank Engine and Elmo and Big Bird could be hazardous to their children, Ron Voake's phone started ringing a lot more often.
Voake makes toys the old-fashioned way: one at a time and out of hardwood. The shelves of his garden-level basement shop are filled with cars and dinosaurs on wheels and trains and rocking horses. He finishes them with nontoxic stains and sealants.
Early this fall, when toy industry giants began warning that some of their products manufactured in China might be defective or tainted with lead, Voake found himself inundated with orders. He posted a note on his website warning that he cannot guarantee Christmas deliveries to all locations.
"I can only make so many things," he said, standing in his shop recently. "I don't hire anybody else."
Voake's toys vary in price and size. A small two-piece train set, for instance, costs $29. But his largest maple and birch train, nearly three feet long and with cars large enough for a small child to ride, is $225.
Voake, 62, started making toys more than three decades ago for the emotionally disturbed children his wife, Susan, a teacher, had in her classes. He found that he enjoyed the work more than his job as a middle-school teacher.
Voake became a full-time toymaker after he and his wife moved to Vermont from Southern California in 1973. They had fallen in love with Vermont the first time they saw it on a drive in the late 1960s, when Voake was a graduate student in Toronto. Even in early spring, when the landscape of the Green Mountain State is still mostly brown, they were transfixed. "We just came through in the ugliest time of year in Vermont," he said. "It was mud season. But compared to Southern California, it looked pretty great."
The couple moved and his wife got a job teaching in Norwich. Voake decided to try his hand building toys full time.
"I just started making toys to see if I could make a living doing that, or sort of a living," he said. "It was worth a shot. It did OK."
At first, they lived in the small town of Fairlee, near lakeside summer camps on a road that brought carloads of parents from around New England. His marketing consisted of that drive-by traffic and his appearance at local crafts fairs.
"When I first started, it was kind of the hippie hangover time," he said. "There were lots of craft fairs."
In California, Voake had used pine for his toys. The soft wood was readily available, but wasn't durable. "It just had great limitations," he said. "It's not strong enough to add the detail. It's not as nice."
He switched to hardwood in Vermont. And he began to buy more tools: a router, sander, radial saw, planer, lathe. His early toys were more primitive and cut in sharp angles. But as he became proficient, he was able to do more complicated angles, softer profiles. Most of his toys now are hard-rock maple.
His three daughters, whom he often watched while his wife taught, became product testers. "You find out what works and what doesn't work when you've got your own kids playing with them," he said.
Some customers drop by Voake's workshop, but it's not easy to find. Signs lead visitors from the center of town to a smaller paved road and then onto the narrow dirt road of Tilden Hill. Voake's driveway is marked by a wooden sign with his name and a carved rocking horse. Go too far up Tilden Hill, and you find yourself maneuvering a steep and deeply rutted road.
"We're not on the way to anywhere," Voake said.
Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com. 