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Shaving Horse

Peach Canoe

Peach Canoe

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Does anybody else use a shaving horse for shaping some aspects of a paddle?

First I do the blade to the throat, and the grip to the 'max choke-up' position (about a foot from the end of the grip)-- I do these clamped to the bench and in a vise for quick flipping.

I do the shaft last, beginning with a draw knife on the shaving horse, and I take it down to eight sides. Then I switch to a low-angle small plane to bring it to 16 sides.

Sometimes I take the horse out into the sun, and sometimes I take it into the living room and do my draw-knifing to Bach and Vivaldi.

Here's my shaving horse; it's made mostly of fir.

IMG_3740 (4).jpg
 
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I do, but mine is a bit different, the head, is the kind that you slide the piece you work in the center, great to work small pieces for chaire i.e. I would like to build an other one with the head in the same style as yours... It look really good by the way!!
 
BTW, I really like the repurposed tractor seat.

A friend has a huge stone circle backyard fire pit, ringed by a dozen of those tractor seats set on posts. Awesome firepit, and who knew there were so many different cast iron tractor seat designs. Some of those designs are dang near art deco (1930’s Farmersexuals?)

One annual tradition at his fire pit is a January Burning of the Christmas Trees party. Everyone brings their dried out pine/fir/spruce and tosses them on the fire.

Wonderful tradition, and a great excuse for an outdoor party in January. Warm as hell too.
 
Yes I really think these seats qualify as art-- so many tools are beautiful in form and function.

I used the horse for a while with just the fir board, but it's really slippery and you need to have a firm base to draw from-- even with the push-back from the treadle down below. I kept sliding around on the board, so I installed the tractor seat which really holds your butt in place. What would be ideal is a sliding tractor seat that can be easily fixed in place with a locking cam or similar.

Yes I built it, but it was one of those projects that grew in complexity and took far too long to complete. I got a little carried away (I can show some closer photos if anyone's interested), and soon it came alive and demanded to be born. I made it ridiculously adjustable, but found that I really only use one position for paddles.

If needed, however, I could put a telephone pole in its jaws and whittle that down to an arrow shaft.

If I did it again I would make it with just one gear, much simpler and lighter, less life-like: the thing seems to 'keep an eye on me' as I work; spooky.
 
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Compared to your beauty of a horse, mine is a flea-ridden burro...

Frankensteined it together a few years back when still living in a 1-bedroom condo. Needed something portable that could collapse down for storage in the tiny locker room allotment. It was made with a 2x6 board, commercial sawhorse brackets, 2x4 legs, large door hinge, a carriage bolt and other wood scraps. Was never allowed to carve in the home so would sometimes take it to a park and carve outside. Now thankfully have a backyard that I can cover in shavings if needed.

Shaving+Horse+54.jpg


Shaving+Horse+58.jpg


DSCN0169.jpg


The design of your clamping head. How did you come up with that? Is that round thing at the bottom a piece of foam tubing to prevent marking up the project?
 
Peach: That is gorgeous! Very nice looking design (and living room) and beautiful finish.

Murat V said:
Is that round thing at the bottom a piece of foam tubing to prevent marking up the project?
Click to expand...

I wondered the same thing. I thought maybe it provided extra grip to hold the piece in place with less pressure.

Thanks for sharing yours Murat. When I thought about building something like Peach's my eyes kind of glazed over. I look at yours and it looks much easier to fashion. Then when I looked back on Peach's again I see that other than the beautiful wood and fit and finish it's maybe not so different after all; though I'm sure that are many little details that make it unique.

Alan
 
Thanks all. Murat V, your horse is sensible and perfect for the job; it's very similar to those used by professional chair bodgers of centuries past.

That round thing in the horse's mouth is a piece of reinforced clear PVC tube over a 1.25" hardwood dowel. It's attached through the 'nostrils' with Lee Valley machine screws and blind nuts inserted into the ends of the dowel. There's a piece of thin flat rubber glued to the angled board near the rabbet.

This is a photo of a well-used bodger's shaving horse.

image_4238.jpeg
image_4240.jpeg
image_4239.jpeg image_4241.jpeg
 
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I need to make one of those ! SWEET !

I've got a bunch of rough cut Ash, air drying now, that is destined for one of those.
Thanks for the inspiration. Mine will have a padded seat !

Jim
 
Now that is a nice addition to the home made tools gallery! Would not have room for a specialized piece myself, but if you do that sort of work often, I see how it would be handy.

I see that the adjustment holes below the head are reinforced. Can I ask what you used for reinforcement?
 
The holes have chrome-moly tube sleeves epoxied in, and the through-pins are half-inch steel rods.
 
I'm too lazy to go out and take a picture of mine, but I built one like THIS last summer from some scrap lumber I had behind the barn. It's no work of art like Peach Canoe's, thats for sure. Still haven't made a paddle, but thats the plan.
 
I'm hoping to build a shave horse this spring. In addition to the useful examples above, a couple I've been looking at are this one, which is similar to Murat's, and this one. It seems to me like the central column with open sides seems more versatile, but the adjustable angle piece of the second seems attractive. I notice that in the first design the central column rotates on the upper horizontal, whereas the second rotates on the lower horizontal - not sure how much that really changes functionality.

Curious if the experienced shavers among us have opinions on pros and cons of the various design aspects?
 
This summer, I came across a campsite-built shave horse on a canoe trip with my boys to Rocky Lake, near East Machias, Maine. It was a paddle-in site, with a lean to, and so someone had made a shave horse out of logs and then used it to fashion a whole slate of campsite furniture. The pile of wood chips indicated it had all been done sometime earlier that season. Unfortunately, I don’t have a better picture than this:
IMG_4949.jpeg
 
I have used C clamps for horizontal and a vice for vertical. It would be handy to have a horse for a lot of paddle making.

I have used a stitching pony which is similar for hand stitching heavy leather like holsters, belts and horse tack.
 
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