Shaving horse is finally done!

I finally get to post finished pictures! So, the thing you see in the picture is basically a very large clamp, developed over the years for chair making. Because there's a lot of work with a drawknife and spokeshave, and because there's a need to keep repositioning the work as it gets completed, this particular way of holding a long piece of work is pretty popular. Sit on the seat, use one foot to push on the treadle, which in turn clamps down on whatever is being held in the clamp, and pull back on the draw knife, or spoke shave. Becuase the natural reflex is to push off of hthe treadle when pulling a tool, the harder you work, the more tightly the piece of wood is held in place.

This particular design was developed by a guy named Brian Boggs, down in Kentucky. I took a class with him ayear and a half ago, and I'm still really excited to do the kind of work he taught us about, but this post is about the horse here, and not about building chairs just yet.

One of the nice things about shave horses in general is that they're designed to hold the work at an angle, to make working a stick into a spindle a little easier. The design I learned on was basically a bench with a hinged board attached to it, and it held the work at a much lower height. At the end of the day, my ribs felt a little weird, becuase I was folded in half at about the bottom of the ribcage, to get my shoulders low enough to make efficient work possible. And after a while, my lower back felt the strain, as well. One of the advantages of this particular design, though, is that the jaw is adjustable from below, instead of from above, which means that while you sit, the top of the work will always be at more or less the same height, regardless of how big the piece is. That means I can work while sitting upright, or leaning slightly back while working. AND, the seat actually positions the pelvis in such a way that the natural curvature of hte spine is restored, meaning the lower back isn't quite tso uncomfortable after long stretches in the saddle. In short, it's a much different animal from the one I learned on. That class was the last time I found myself on a shave horse, and I noticed almost right away that I felt a lot more comfortable working on this one. Or, rather, I remembered very clearly how uncomfortable I was, last time I was working wood in this particular way.

Last shot is a picture of my shop mate Don, taking the horse for a ride, so you can see the thing in use.

I have a few more things to build before I can really dig into making chairs. But they'll be coming soon enough...

Shave horse pt II

So, I've gotten more done on this thing. It's turning into an almost respectable piece of work in its own right, and it's actual woodwork, so that's something, at least. Built of Ash, coated in Tung oil.

In the past few days I took rough shaped pieces to their final shape, and this morning, I chamfered a bunch of edges, planes surfaces smooth (faster than sanding on something with this many flat surfaces and no inside corners.) and planed a few places smooth, like the front end where the front leg joins the body... before, it wasn't quite as flush and smooth as I'd have liked.

And I upholstered the seat, which I'd carved out of cherry last week. I was debating the virtues of leaving the solid cherry, but today I said screw it, wrapped it in leather, stuffed it full of shavings, and tacked it all in place. I screwed it to the keel block, which slides up and down the body of the "horse" and tehn got the locking lever put together. I was working on the seat while the body and parts were drying, since I'd oiled them earlier in the day.

Last but not least, I cut the notch for the cross-piece in the lower jaw, which is still in process... but more about all of that when the thing is complete, and then I'll be able to show off what the silly thing is used for.

Shave horse in progress, and other things.

So, there are various things I'm working on. Too many of them are shop projects, and not paying projects, but that's a topic for another day.

One of those shop projects is a shave horse. For those of you who've never really heard of one of those before, it's basically a large, foot operated clamp, with a place to sit. The clamp holds the work pointed more or less at the operator, so that he or she may use a spokeshave or drawknife to shape it. There are varitions on the theme, and a couple of different ways of making them, but the one I'm working on was developed by Brian Boggs, a chairmaker who works (worked?) out of Berea, Kentucky. I took a class with Brian a year and a half ago, and I'm still in awe. He's one of those smart people who has done a lot of work to understand the things that he does. And watching him with a tool in his hand is really something to see. It's not every day that you get to see someone at work who is so familar with his craft as Brian is. He shapes wood with more fluency than some people have at tying their shoes. But I digress... Again, a topic for another day.

So far, I've built the base to the shave horse. It looks vaguely like an amputee sawhorse. I haven't put the seat together yet, which is one of the next steps, so I can fit the rest of the pieces involved. And, just for a goof, I hung a pair of hex nuts between the back legs. Dumb guy humor, but it works for me.

Yes, the back end sits up higher than the front end. yes, it's sort-of on purpose. One of the features of Brian's shave-horses is a seat the tilts forward, to re-align the spine, to make work less tiring. That's one of hte problems with sitting at or on a bench or stool, or anything flat. To sit up straight, you either have to shove your back end way out behind you, or curve the lumbar section of your spine forward, out of the normal recurve position. On most shavehorses, which are flat, you have to lean forward to work. I've tried this, and it's tiring... and the lower back does complain. I tried Brian's solution, and clamped on a simple board, shimmed up in the back. It makes a huge difference. The ideas behind my decision to have the back end higher up are the following:

1) Folks who have to have the seat farther back will have longer legs than I do, and they'll probably appreciate a little more elevation

2) It angles the seat a little bit already, so shaping a seat that's angled will be easier.

3) The back legs started out a little long anyway. I sat down, and liked the angle, so I left it, but it also saved me from having to cut hte legs down again.

Once the horse is finished up, I have a few other things I need to make to put together a chair building outfit, like a steam box, and a kiln for drying parts, and some bending forms, and so on. But one thing at a time.

In other news, I spent the past day and a half of shop time re-arranging my work space, to get the basics all within arms reach. The basic idea is taken from numerous sources of shop management, including the infamous Toyota Production System, and the concept is pretty simple. Wasted movement is wasted time and effort. Minimize walking around. Keep important tools close at hand. This is something I read about, but was already on the way to figuring out for myself... I called the problem a case of "the bumblebees." Essentially, I spent a lot of time in my first shop buzzing around for one tool or another, which was either stored in the wrong place (across the shop) or had been left in the wrong place when I'd used it last. The second part I'm working on by using a pouch to carry things like tape measure, 6" combination square, pencil, marking knife... to have these things with me when I'm in the machine room and need to measure something. It's helping, some. Other times, I take the pouch out, and leave it somewhere, and then I'm right back at square one. Ugh.

So, refinements to the space continue, but I think it's finaly starting to get somewhere.