Oak Tree to Shave Horse #3: The 90% solution

I had a bunch of time today to work on the shave horse and made some pretty good progress. Check it out:

I really enjoy doing things the traditional way using hand tools so that’s how I went about building this thing. But, today, I cheated. Those three mortises that the vertical lever board runs through were drilled out with a power drill. I started to hog out the waste with a bit and brace but decided I wouldn’t look back on this moment and regret killing some electrons for that particular task.

It’s not done but it’s pretty close. I still need to do something for the foot pedal portion, need to locate and drill a few holes in the vertical board to allow for adjusting the lever higher to accommodate thicker stock, remake one of the legs, and make some adjustments to the dumb head. I’ll probably end up replacing the dumb head because I split it when mashing it on the tenon. And that should about do it.

-- Billy