Refers to project posted here.
After my initial blog post I got some good suggestions and questions in the comments so I thought I would address those in a blog here.
LesB said he thought the rear leg would need more bracing. My dad and I were discussing what we thought the weak point would be and we both also thought it would be the rear leg. I’m using the Kreg Pocket Screw system to assemble this piece and I have four screws from the leg to the seat and two screws from the cross-brace to the leg. I’m confident this will hold for any children. I just have to figure out how to keep the adults off it.
JS333 said I should add a tail for aesthetic reasons and that got me thinking. If I added a tail it could also help support the rear leg. I realize the tail in the picture below is a little misshapen but I was just trying to show the idea.
LesB also wondered about how the horse is secured to the rocker portion. This is something I was wondering about also and decided to wait until it was built and see what I thought. I wondered about some sort of locking pegs but once I got it assembled I realized I don’t need them. The wheels sit deep into the base and I also have routed slots which secure the wheel further and are not shown on the drawing.
LesB’s other question was how the rotation was accomplished and if there were some type of stop. The rotation is accomplished with a lazy susan bearing and a steel rod connecting the head to the front leg.
In my original design I had planned for a rotation stop as shown in the pictures below. I got sort of lazy in the build and didn’t include it. It is still quite stable however.
JS333 asked about rounding of the seat specifically. I did end up rounding over a lot of the edges for safety but I didn’t show that in the SketchUp model. My plan is to start from scratch again and make an “as-built” SketchUp drawing with the proper techniques. The plan I used to build it was very much a working plan so I want to clean it up.
There were a lot of things that came up in the building of this that I said I would need to fix “next time.” I guess I’ll have to make at least one more of these.
-- Kyle Shipp, Michigan, http://battleshipp.blogspot.com
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