Rocking Horse

First project and post on Lumberjocks!

This is a rocking horse I built. several firsts on this one.

1. using rough lumber
2. CURVES!!! bent laminated rockers.
3. Compound angles…. see “Legs” below
4. Dovetail/tenon joints

Construction:
The whole thing is made out of Hard Maple with Walnut accents. The head and tail are attached to the body with a single large dovetail.

Rockers:
This was my first time bending wood. I spent some time debating lamination vs steam bending. In the end I chose bent lamination. Mostly because it meant I didn’t have to come up with a steaming rig. Also I saw some posts that maple, let alone, kiln dried maple is a bad choice for steam bending. The Rails are made up of 5 pieces, just a hair under .25” thick. The lamination’s came out great, no gaps, no noticeable spring-back. and both pieces match each other perfectly.

Legs:
The compound angles for the legs gave me one hell of a time. My first design was going to have the legs screwed into the body piece, and into a stretcher connected to the rockers. But noooo. that was too easy and I just had to be fancy. So I probably spent a day just thinking about the angles before I realized the legs cant be square, but have to be parallelograms! That fixed some of the issues. I ended up being a bit off, so when I went to mount the rockers I had to scribe, and square up the lap joint.

Finish:
100% Pure Tung oil. first coat 1:2 Oil to mineral spirits. Final coat 2:1. Wet sanded to 800 grit.