| Blog series by mot consisting of 6 parts so far |
Part 1: Every Little Boy Needs a Rocking Horse
Well, I procrastinated on this little project enough. Our two year old son, Mot Jr. (aka The Vandal,) needs a Christmas Gift from the shop. My daughter wants an iPod. What’s a guy to do. I settled on a plan from Lee Valley for a nice little rocker and started the build 2 nights ago. I started by grabbing some wood from the rack. I chose red oak because it’s what I have in abundance and after an attempt to resist it’s downfalls, I’ve become quite used to working...
Part 2: Inlays!
I got a couple of hours down in the shop tonight, so I did the inlays on the horse. I started by resawing some walnut that I had laying around left over from God knows what. I couldn’t use the GRRipper here, so no controversy tonight! I ran the pieces through the Performax to get them fairly close to size. I made a little router jig to route the grooves for the inlays. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to do this, but I brainstormed with Bob #2 and then deci...
Part 3: The Saddle!
The Rocking Horse build continues with the saddle. Two blocks measuring 4” x 4” x 10” were laminated from red oak. The saddle is cut in two pieces that sandwich the main horse. Each halve is cut from inside a block, much like a cabriole leg. The first two cuts creating the side profile: The block was taped back together, and the top profile was then cut, revealing the half saddle within: The two halves of the saddle ready for shaping. The saddl...
Part 4: The Rockers
This part of the project gave me more grief than any so far. They have to be perfect and exactly the same otherwise you have a wobble horse instead of a rocker. So, I decided to make a prototype. Setting up a temporary trammel and using all the bench square footage I could muster, I started measuring the arcs. I cut my prototype / template from 1/4” hardboard on my little trammel setup. I used a scrap piece of 1/4” plywood, a clear base for the router, and some double...
Part 5: Hi-Ho, Silver!
Well, you’re going to see it how he sees it. More on that… I spent several very late nights getting the horse completed for Christmas. Three nights ago, I was able to get the legs mounted to the body. I was suffering with aligning each front and each back leg but then benifitted from the time that I spent leveling my work surfaces. Thanks to Neil Lamens for that little tidbit gleaned from his Furnitology Blog. With a level work surface, the left side legs were aligned, the...
Part 6: Final
Well, Christmas was a big hit, but I had to put a few finishing touches on the horse. Karson was observant to point out that there wasn’t any place for the little rider to put his feet, it needed ears, and it needed some finish on it. I mixed up some amber shellac flakes from Lee Valley in a 2# cut. Thanks Bob #2 for the math help on small batches. I was scratching my head a bit. First I used Dowelmax to align the ear blocks and to centre drill the top for the leather ears. I ...
The bantering and ramblings of a hobby woodworker/lumberjock!
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Blog Series
- 2 x 4 Challenge - 2 parts
- Auxillary Workbench - 6 parts
- Festool Resource Information Collection - 1 part
- Hand Tools - 1 part
- Jigs and Fixtures - 3 parts
- Rocking Horse - 6 parts
- Shop Multimedia - 2 parts
- Tools - 5 parts
- Turning a Bowl - 3 parts
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