New Shaving Horse, and PSA warning

ken werner

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Central NY State
Hi all, nice to stop back for a visit. Anyway, for those who read Fine Woodworking, the current issue has an article about making a shaving horse. The design looked good to me, especially the comfy chair part of it, so I made one. Taking an out of character step, I bought the detailed plans, rather than just going from the article. Turns out both the cut list and the article contain a critical error, which, if followed, will result in a beam height 1 1/2" lower than the design calls for. So here's the PSA: The front leg blank should be 23" long, not 20". I've contacted the author, who was very helpful, and hopefully FWW will issue a correction. The shaving horse in the background is the one I've used for the past 25 years or so.

Anyway, here are pics of the completed shaving horse. It has some really nice features, and took a few days to build.
 

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Thanks for the heads up Ken, as I also saw the article and am wanting to build it...hopefully this winter, as my plate is currently full. The seat looks great and I wonder if you give some details on how you contoured it.
 
I have to admit that I like the looks of your original a lot more.. but the seat on that new one does look a lot more comfy. I'm also betting it's a whole bunch lighter as well.

Nice work all around!
 
Hi Bill,
I contoured it by the seat of my pants. Carve a little, sit on it, carve some more, sit some more.....

Well truthfully, I hollowed it out with a curved adze and a scorp, then refined with a compass plane, travisher, scraper and sandpaper. I find hollowing a seat hard work, both physically demanding, and hard to read the wood. Take a look at Curtis Buchanan's youtube on carving a Windsor seat, to see a master at work. My process looks nothing like his.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8nJcB2oav4

Watch the next few steps to see him refine his work.


Thanks for the heads up Ken, as I also saw the article and am wanting to build it...hopefully this winter, as my plate is currently full. The seat looks great and I wonder if you give some details on how you contoured it.

Rennie, it sure is.

Ryan, I like the looks of the old one too, but the new one is so much better to sit on, and also [and more importantly] it holds the work with much more stability. Actually, Southern yellow pine is pretty heavy, so by weight they are fairly similar.
 
Very nice, Ken. :thumb: Your shop is going to look all modern now, lol.

I always wondered why a horse would be shaving in the first place, but then I found this...

0c200672f22cb9af896cce1926c1cac8.jpg
 
Posts like these really make me feel like a novice (which I am), had to google half of those tools you mentioned Ken. ;) Looking forward to seeing some of the projects that come off of it.
 
Thanks for the feads up, at first when I read your title and PSA I thought about Prostatic Syndrome Adenoma, we foreigners are not so familiar with english abreviations :rofl: But when one reads "PSA warning" sounds like something bad, doesn't it?
 
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