Shaving Horse - Improvement

Back when I blogged about my first attempt at a Shaving Horse with scrap wood, I mentioned my error of making the slot for the anvil too wide. This resulted in the anvil head leaning to one side and not fully clamping the paddle when pressed. So to solve the problem I needed a new clamping head that would be as wide as the workstation.

I found what I was looking for in my growing scrap pieces pile - a piece of rough-sawn yellow poplar that had been severly chiped on one edge, resulting in a bit of a natural point. I cut off a 5.5 inch wide piece, the actual width of the 2x6 board used in making the horse. The picture shows where I cut it from the stock and a rectangular through mortise I cut out to attach it to the anvil.

I quickly realized that a scrap piece of disfigured maple (with a major knothole) I had been keeping would be the perfect piece to complete the anvil. It was just a slight bit more narrow than the slot I had cut in the horse so there was no chance of the anvil wiggling from side to side when pressed with the foot pedal. By cutting a through tenon that would fit in the poplar head piece, I'd be able to make a stronger anvil that would still be able to be disassembled. This would be my first attempt at cutting something like this, but with a few careful measurements I proceeded to cut out the maple stock with my regular cross-cut saw and ended up with a crude, but satisfactory tenon for this project. To finish off, I used a 1 1/4" spade drill bit to cut a hole for a hardwood dowel. This I ensured was a 1/4 inch lower than where the anvil head would rest so that I could custom fit a dowel and secure the head in place.


Measured tenon lines and final anvil
The hardwood dowel scrap I had lying around was flatten on one edge by clamping it to a vise and using the handy spokeshave. This way, when inserted in the hole it would press flat against the top of the poplar anvil head and hold it in place tightly. This took some trial and error to get right as I didn't want to over shave the dowel piece I had on hand. Everything worked out well and the head fits nice and tight. On the horse, I drilled 2 more hole positions for the 6inch carriage bolt used as the fulcrum so as to be able to move the vise closer or further away as the project demanded.


Flattened Dowel & Assembled Headpiece
Ultimately, I wanted to re-install the foot pedal system on the first edition, but fitting it with the maple piece required to much extra reshaping of the wood. So I just used the spade bit to drill another hole for the remaining bit of scrap dowel and that is used as a pedal. I could cut another through mortise in another scrap piece to use as a peddle and hold it in place on the bottom with a smaller piece of dowel, but I'm lazy and want to get back to paddle making.


My horse isn't going to win any prizes for looks, but this new edition folds down well for storage & transport and suits my current paddle making needs.

By the way, for anyone else who wants to build their own, I basically adapted my horse from the info gleamed on the following links:

• Richard Burton's plan
• Bob Smalser article at WoodCentral.com
• Tom Rettie's article at BloodandSawDust.com
• The photo intensive page at trod.org

Shaving Horse - First Edition

After 10 paddles carved on the balcony furniture or picnic tables at the cottage, I decided it was time to build a shaving horse. This would essentially allow for the hobby to be completed indoors during the winter months in my condo locker room. I first used a shaving horse at the Canadian Canoe Museum's Preserving Skills workroom with heavy hardwood stations built by Don Duncan. They were great to work on, but I knew that for my needs, a smaller version would suffice.

The priorities for me were:

1. Portability - it needed to be able disassemble / fold for minimum space & storage into my tight locker room
   
2. Lightness - weight was an issue for transportation / use
   
3. Cheap - wanted to re-use waste wood for ecological and cost reasons.
   

So I set up planning a design after checking out sample pics on the web. The ones at the Canoe Museum were "Dumbhead" style that worked on a lever built into the centre of the bench as opposed to "English" style that had a frame style vise which would be more cumbersome while working on a long paddle. Furthermore, most designs I saw required permanent fastening with wood screws that prevented any form of foldability. This wasn't feasible in my limited workspace. But while contemplating ideas to get around this dilemma, I came across a large industrial door hinge left over from another project when looking for tools & scrap materials for the build. The hinge would be the answer I was looking for.

As luck would have it, I had purchased some plastic sawhorse brackets from Home Depot earlier in the month to make a portable sawhorse for use on the balcony, but then scored a great deal at Canadian Tire for 2 folding metal sawhorse ($8.99 each - normally $34.99!). So the brackets sat unused until deciding to use them for the horse. With some old 2x6 and 2x4s, the industrial door hinge, and the brackets I ended up constructing the basic design.


For the anvil, I had some 1x3 and pressure treated lumber scraps that I screwed together. The base was made with some more scraps joined together to form a foot pedal that attached with some 3 inch carriage bolts found in a bucket full of old nails & screws. To fit the completed vise on the horse, I ended up drilling 4 pilot holes in the 2x6 and cutting out a rectangular slot with a coping saw.


Once disassemble and packed, the whole horse takes up little space. The parts fit nicely on the frame and with a couple of velcro straps, everything can be easily transported. Assembly is easy too. The anvil is held in place with a 6" carriage bolt.


The height & angle of the workbench can be adjusted with a scrap piece of wood wedged under it. It is held in place no problem once some foot pressure is applied to the vice. So the door hinge idea worked


The final product


Taking the horse for a ride

Overall, I'm quite happy with it. Pretty low cost & labour given that the materials were lying around anyway. The one mistake I made was making the slot for the anvil too wide and as a result, the anvil leans to one side when pressed down with the foot pedal. I'm now working on a solution (a better anvil) using a thicker maple scrap piece cut from making the maple white water paddle this past summer. More on that "upgrade" later.