When Wayne Metcalfe started making the nutcracker now on display at his Rayville, Missouri, farm, he wasn’t quite sure how big it would be. That’s because while he knew the approximate proportions, he didn’t work out all the math.
“My wife loves nutcrackers, so I used a nutcracker she had as kind of a model,” he says. “But it’s fifteen inches tall. So I figured I’ll multiple everything by ten, approximately. Well, if you make something ten times bigger left to right, it goes ten times bigger up and down, and I guess I forgot about that.”
The result of his project, which is two years in the making, is a towering nutcracker which Metcalfe believes is the largest functional, free-standing, handmade, all-wood nutcracker in the country.
“There’s one larger made out of a tree in Oregon,” he says. “But it’s not handmade. God made that. I have not seen any near the size of mine. I’ve seen six foot, that’s it.”
The nutcracker, which Metcalfe rushed to finish this year, is free for anyone to take a look at if they’re willing to make the trek out to Rayville, due east of Excelsior Springs.
Ninety percent of the nutcracker is made from scrap wood and is a mixture of pine, polar, oak, walnut and douglas fir.
The hat is covered in what he calls “Muppet fur.”
Metcalfe will unveil the nutcracker on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and says there’s plenty of room for anyone who wants to watch on his one-acre front lawn.
GO: The largest functional, free-standing, handmade, all-wood nutcracker in the country is on display at Wayne Metcalfe’s farm, 19390 MO-13, Rayville, MO. It will be unveiled at 2 pm on Saturday, November 28.
