My First Rocking Horse #3: Finished it!

Finished the rocking horse! Or at least declared it done…

More rambling prose and pictures at the LumberJocks project page and my personal journal page on the rocking horse.

Things I learned:

• Fir is soft. Really soft. Soft enough that I was a fool to think that stain was the right solution to sub-optimal wood, ‘cause I’ve got a chip or two already, and a few years of a kid beating on it will change things dramatically.
• Shellac is shiny, and plays heck with wood glue adhesion. Luckily I had a big bottle of gap-filling cyanoacrylate.
• Take the time to build the jigs to get things right, rather than trying to fix it with sanding. There will be more rocking horses, but there’ll be a set of jigs and patterns on which I can use router bearing bits made first.
• The shape of the rockers is okay, but I should probably experiment a bit. From an aesthetic and “ways that kids can rework a toy” aspect I don’t necessarily like the rockerless horses (the ones that hang from a frame), but they may have better action.
• Don’t let the project size get away from me. This is physically bigger than I’d envisioned when I first started laying out the patterns. One out of 4/4 or even 3/4” lumber, ala Alan’s rocking horse from a few days ago, would probably be a good starter horse.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke