"Just when I'm getting tired of it and burn out," he said, "then I get in the fields."
Every inch of space in Calvin's basement shop is taken up with a restoration in progress. His interest, clearly, is in the project at hand.
"It's about production," he said, "not cleanliness!"
"I have seven drills, each used with a different size bit," he said. "You'd be surprised how much time you lose changing drill bits."
Calvin even has a paint booth in his shop. He hangs parts to dry (he uses a hardener in his paint). He uses a small gun that looks like a hose nozzle to paint the toys. Because each restoration project is unique, predicting completion time is a guessing game.
"It is hard to compare apples to oranges," he said. "If I pick up a toy in winter at a show, I try to do it by the next show. Although I try to do 'first one in, first one out', it doesn't always work that way. One reason is, I hate to mix paint to paint just one tractor."
Yet each tractor that Calvin customizes is unique.
"I never build a tractor the same way," he said.
Besides the toys, Calvin also has a few big ones for shows and such. Among them: A restored 1939 F14 McCormick Deering Calvin had played on as a boy.