Saturday 14 July 2012

New shaving horse

Peter Galbert, chair maker, has come up with a new shave horse design, I have just made one and I am very impressed with it. One of my main problems with these tools is the time it takes to change the height of the head so that I can use smaller or larger billets of wood. In the past if I was shaving a largish bit of wood and then needed to do small spindles then my legs would be at full stretch. With the Smarthead horse, as Peter calls it, I just need to pull the head forward and click it into a new position on the internal ratchet. Moving it backwards to have a greater mouth opening is just as easy.

I have had to thin down and wax the internal components as they were a bit stiff. I do wonder how it will operate if kept outside or in wet conditions. I suppose if everything is made a bit looser and it should be okay, make it out of oak and it should last well outside.
The other great thing about this design is that it may be able to be retro fitted to your existing horse.

Peter has a whole series of videos and even full scale plans, all free, on his blog at http://chairnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/smarthead-shavehorse.html
The Smarthead horse is fun and satisfying to make and suits my style of working perfectly.

It will be going on tour with me at the shows I attend, Exeter Craft festival, Spoonfest, Treefest, APF, and the Bentley wood fair. so pop along and have a go on it.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Sean
    That looks great - what type of wood did you use to make it from?
    Richard

    ReplyDelete
  2. Looks really good Sean!

    I managed to break the topmost tooth member, but I'd made it in ash. Going to recut it from elm.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Guys, I made this from ash. So how did the top tooth break Richard, and what was the growth ring and grain pattern like? The way Peter designed it was that the teeth are inline with the grain so they should not break.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sean,
    How do you think making this from plywood will work?
    It strikes me that I could get this laser or water-jet cut from ply

    ReplyDelete


Sorry, because of the huge amount of dubious people leaving spam comments for their useless stuff, I unfortunately have to bring back word verification.