[New post] Hello my old friend. It’s been a while. Let’s make you some horseshoes. Rocking Horse for Rafaella (pt3)
James Stewart posted: " So, it's not uncommon for woodworkers to start a project and then get sidetracked. I try my best not to do this. I really work very hard to finish what I start so I don't have a bunch of parts lying all over. But this project was an exception. Let me" Stewart Woodworks
So, it's not uncommon for woodworkers to start a project and then get sidetracked. I try my best not to do this. I really work very hard to finish what I start so I don't have a bunch of parts lying all over. But this project was an exception. Let me bring you back up to speed.
Back in spring of 2021 I had the bright idea of building a rocking horse for my granddaughter Rafaella who was born in late 2020. Thinking I didn't want to make her one she'd grow out of fast, I decided to make a medium sized rocking horse. I ordered a kit with instructions and templates and started cutting out and gluing all of the plywood together. I even started to power-carve. If you've never power carved with a blade or abrasive disk spinning at high rpm inches from your knuckles on an angle grinder it's an experience that will get your attention.
So after a weekend of power carving and taking it slow I had three profound thoughts which caused the 18 month delay from when I started this project and today. (1) I started to get a bit nervous around the finer features like the hooves and especially the head. (2) I started thinking about the fact that Rafaella was still only 8 months old so there was no rush to complete the project because this was going to be a bigger horse than you'd let a toddler ride on and (3) Eric and Helina were still in Japan on Navy duty and the shipping cost to Japan was going to be prohibitive. That's when I decided I'd set the bigger rocking horse aside and practice on something a bit smaller.
So in late 2021 I switched gears and made a mock up of the horse's head only and practice my power carving on it to get the hang of the details. This went so well that I decided to keep the head and I created a more toddler friendly version of the rocking horse that could be reasonably shipped to Japan where it was a big hit for Christmas 2021. Look back in my older late 2021 blogs for details on the small chair build.
Meanwhile the partially carved horse was sitting in the corner. and now that Rafaella is over 2 years old and they are all back in the USA it's time to finish the larger rocking horse. So I pulled it out this weekend and tentatively started doing some light work.
When I last left the horse I was still a bit nervous about the fine details. The hooves and the head are the most recognizable. The body is relatively simple by comparison. It's hard to envision the stacked laminations that are just the basic contours being carved into a recognizable shape like hooves and horseshoes. But I dusted off the instructional DVD found my angle grinder and attachments and slowly started to chip away at this carving again this weekend. I took it slow today because I didn't want to make any mistakes. But I think the result is remarkable. It's not really fine detail carving, but it is definitely horse-shaped.
The other two operations I worked on was sanding of the body. Yes - sanding. Every woodworker's favorite pastime. And this is just the beginning. I was just trying out all the various ways I have to sand to remove the grinder attachment marks and start fairing in all the lines. I have several more weekends of sanding in my future after I finish the head and progressively work my way up through various power tools and grits. This weekend I kept it to fairly abrasive grades like 60 grit in various random orbital sanders of 6 and 5 inch disks and other attachments for a portable drill like flap-wheels and rotary drums of various sizes.
And finally I started to fill any voids or cracks with epoxy mixed with sawdust. Plywood is certainly great, but not perfect.
Anyway - it's a start on a project I put aside 18 months ago. Time to finish this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment