Chuck Osborn holds a miniature wheel made of tin and steel in the basement workshop of his rural Newton home. The 77-year-old points to each component. It’s intricate. He crafts the unit with a scrap piece of metal pipe and molds the hub from a strip of steel. Holes in the hub have to be drilled for each individual spoke and then threaded, soldering each tiny rod to the wheel.

For Osborn, it’s the attention to detail that makes his hobby of miniature tractor building a rewarding challenge.

“Unless you pick that up, you will not know how heavy it is,” he said as he points to a finished McCormick tractor at his painting station. “That’s 10 pounds right there.”