Santa's Elves at Work
Farm toy scratch-builders make miniature masterpieces
By Bill Vossler
Scratch-built farm toys often begin as labors of love, created in a rush of playful fun, according to Gilson Riecke, Ev Weber and Terry Rouch.
Gilson, of Ruthven, Iowa, says, “That's why I build tractors. So I can have fun.”
Ev, of Lima, Ohio, says he was looking for something fun to do when he retired from his U.S. Department of Defense job in 1977.
According to collectors who covet toy models produced by these three scratch-builders, they can't go wrong either. They get realistic farm toys exhibiting great detail, pieces that continue to rise in value, and toys that only a limited number of collectors have.
Gilson Riecke
Each scratch-builder began creating for different reasons, uses different materials and works differently to make his little masterpieces. Gilson Riecke became interested after he had made six patterns for tractors for the late Lyle Dingman, one of the farm toy hobby's earliest scratch-builders.
“That got me intrigued,” Gilson says, “and after that, I decided I wanted to try building tractors on my own.” His first was a Farmall Cub. “I built that one for myself. I made the Cub because no one else had made one, and I had a full-size one of my own.”
He followed that with a wide variety of tractors over the years: John Deere A, B, G, LA, M, MT, International Harvester F-12, F-14, 400, 450, Massey-Harris 44, Oliver 88, Minneapolis-Moline Jetstar, Allis-Chalmers WD-45, as well as a John Deere baler, corn sheller, farm engine, plow, Lindeman crawler, IH corn picker, farm engine, hay mower, 1-, 2- and 3-bottom plows, T-6 crawler, and various farm items, like grease guns, oil cans, cream separators, pump jacks and pumps, as well as others.
Though all of Gilson's toys are essentially masterpieces, many people consider his Farmall F-20 the best. “When I got out of high school I was a mechanic for IH and I worked on a lot of F-20s, so it was a tractor I knew very well,” he recalls. “My dad had an F-20 on the farm, too. Those added up to reasons why I chose to make it.”
He said he wanted his F-20 to look real, and “real” meant extensive detail. That meant returning numerous times to the real F-20 until he'd gotten all the measurements, then scaling them down for the F-20 model. “The F-20 toy tractor is made up of 67 pieces,” he says. “For example, two of them are the seat and bracket. They're made of aluminum. The seat is separate and is riveted. Every piece you can see, we make. If it doesn't have bolts and burrs, it doesn't look real to me. Plus it's hard, and I like a challenge.”