I am making a full size rocking horse for our granddaughter Rafaella and I decided to make a mock up of the head as a practice before I carve the real head. I then liked the head enough that I decided to make a smaller version of the rocking horse that is really half seat / chair like the picture below.

Photo from the "Rocking Horse Shop" where I bought my plans. Please go to the Rocking Horse Shop for your own plans and support woodworking businesses who create these great ideas for the rest of us.

https://www.rockinghorse.co.uk/hand-carved-horses/our-horses/our-horses

Unfortunately I am not real wowed by the arm chair portion so I was inspired elsewhere. I have also been a fan of the John Brown / Chris Schwarz style Welsh Stick Chairs popularized at Lost Art Press so I decided since this is just for fun I'd try doing an arm bow similar to the Welsh Stick Chair process in three parts.

Photo of one of Chris Schwarz Welsh Stick Chairs. I love the look of these chairs but have never built one. You can also make these without the high back and just stop at the arm chair height which is what I'm aiming for.
Also from Lost Art Press. Similar to above but without the high back comb. The arm is made from three pieces of wood. The top piece here is a bit high for my taste, but otherwise you get the idea.

First, since I've never built a chair for a small child I took my cues from a family heirloom passed down on my side of the family to the kids. This little rocking chair was purchased as an antique in Maine at about the time of my birth. My guess is that it is turn of the 20th century. Looks like a new England style ladderback probably a factory chair. Note the proportions are a bit chunky, but in many ways it is very similar to the John (Jennie) Alexander chairs I have been making but a bit less refined. Note that the seat is also a woven paper cord so if you have any doubts about how well paper-cord stands up to seats this chair is possibly 80-120 years old and I don't think my parents ever repaired it.

  • Roughly twelve inches wide at the opening. That woven paper cord seat is at least 50+ and possibly 120 years old? We have never replaced it in my lifetime. Chair could be anywhere from 1900-1940 in age I'm guessing.

Given the small rocking chair seat is 12 inches wide in the opening I chose to make that the width of the opening on the arm bow. The welsh stick chair arm bows are essentially just circular so I started on a piece of paper and drew a 12 inch inner diameter circle followed by a 13.5 inch outer diameter. I then extended and made the "hands" at the ends of the arms slightly larger.

Start in paper and then progress to a plywood mock-up template

After tracing on paper I then traced the paper template onto a cheap piece of plywood. Then I went through my woodpile to see if I had any interesting wood. In an ideal world I'd find something that had big sweeping grain around a large knot, but I didn't have any on stock. But I did have a piece of sassafras full of defects that seemed like a good candidate since I can't think how else I'd use this particular board.

Seems kind of risky to try and get anything useful around teh defects in this wood, but I found a path - if just barely.

After I ripped the board into two book matched halves I planed them to a consistent thickness and then started dreaming how I was going to get the two halves out of the book matched boards. I decided to wrap the arms around a bit of included bark from a knot and hope for the best.

Using a doweling jig to hold the miter in place until I could glue up teh "doubler"

eIn order to join the two pieces together I needed to crate a miter joint but the joint was only 1.5 inches wide. That's a very small end grain to end grain miter so I called a fellow woodworker who lives close by and asked if I could borrow their Festool Domino (Great to know some other woodworkers close by). Unfortunately he owns the tool with another woodworker who currently had it but he did have a doweling jig. The doweling jig was the perfect tool for this as it's really just an alignment helper.

The two halves are glued together but they need the third piece across the top to add strength.

After the two halves were glued together I then cut the "doubler" a third piece of wood that is glued across the top of the two halves to strengthen the joints. I'm still a bit nervous about grain run-out on the hands and if that will be weak when it comes time to drill the post holes, but I figure this is for a young child so hopefully nobody who weighs grandpa's weight will try and sit in the chair horse.