A local teen is trying his hand at entrepreneurship this summer with a new toy that provides consumers with endless possibilities.

Noah Faust, a recent Oakwood High School graduate, created his wooden toy, called Conjoynts, in the school’s engineering lab. He is the son of Sara and Mitchell Faust of Oakwood.

He is now trying to turn what began as uniquely shaped scrap wood pieces made to pass the time into a business.

“I had finished a project early, so I had some free time to pursue my own ideas, and I wanted to experiment with the laser cutter a little bit,” Noah Faust said.

He left a few pieces he had created on his teacher, Tony Rainsberger’s, desk. The next day Rainsberger approached Faust to encourage him to make more of the objects due to the interest they generated with his other students.

“He gave me a small set, and I had them sitting on my desk and a large percentage of my students would pick them up and play with them,” Rainsberger said.

The plywood pieces are a variety of unique shapes that were designed to be proportional to one another. When combined, the shapes become 3-D objects.

Faust was inspired by the kits that are sold in stores that supply wooden pieces designed to form an animal, but wanted to expand the idea into a more open-ended version in which a person can create anything they think of.

“I recently created a monkey holding a banana and one of my friends made a dragon,” Faust said.

“Everyone makes something different.”

He put his project on Kickstarter, a website designed to help fund projects all over the world. With the site, people can pledge money to the project and receive Conjoynts packages, depending on the amount pledged.

Faust’s project has a deadline of 2:30 p.m. Friday to earn $4,000 in funds. If his goal is not reached, backers will not be charged the money they pledged.

Faust, who will be attending Ohio State University in the fall for electrical and computer engineering, said that he has always had an interest in engineering and building.

“I’ve been an engineer since birth,” he said. “In my seventh- grade art class we had old toasters and irons we were supposed to be sketching. I got a detention because I took them apart instead.”

Rainsberger said that Faust is very inquisitive with the technical skills to back up his problem solving abilities.

“He’s very creative and intelligent. When he finds something he’s interested in, he puts in the extra effort,” Rainsberger said. “He’ll stay after school until I have to shoo him out of the lab.”

Faust intends to contact a company that produces wooden toys after his deadline has passed to talk about manufacturing Conjoynts on a larger scale.

For the time being he will wait to see if his goal is reached, something Rainsberger hopes to see come true.

“He has a great idea,” Rainsberger said. “Conjoynts are only limited by the creativity of the person playing with the toy.”

Faust’s project was given extra attention this week when Kickstarter named it a Pick of the Week. As of early this week his project had reached more than 80 percent of its Kickstarter goal for funding.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2113 or kelsey.cundiff@coxinc.com.