As some of you might know, I like
collecting builders waste and putting it to good use. Because of this, when I saw a load of 2x4s in a skip (dumpster) near my home, I had to collect them and bring them home. They were full of nails and there was a few woodworm holes and so they have sat, for a few months now, outside.
Cue the winter and we are getting lots of rain. The timber is getting wet, starting to grow things and, if I don't do something with it soon, it's not going to be useful for much!
I have always wanted a shave horse (and actually tried, and failed, to make one a few years back). I figured that this scrap timber is a great way to build one - it was free, so I don't mind if it has a relatively short life, and a shave horse that lives outside would likely end up with woodworm anyway.
In total, I had to buy a single, long bolt for this project. I think it is M10 x 170mm. The other M10 bolts and screws I had kicking around.
The shave horse is built using two lengths that sandwich the single leg and a few spacer blocks to form the 'body'. The body is bolted together for strength.
The opposite pair of legs are mitred and screwed into the outside of the body and stretched/braced using some other scrap wood (unfortunately painted a lurid pink! I think this came from a neighbour's house). The splay of these legs took a bit of fiddling to get right and I actually cut them twice. It feels very stable now so I think it was worth the time.
The 'swing arm' is another 2x4, lightly sanded for clearance, that pivots on the long bolt. I bored a 25mm hole in the bottom of this piece and inserted a length of old broom handle that I had shaved down to fit. The position of this arm depends on the length of the user's legs. I loosely clamped the arm in place and sat on the horse, rotating the arm until it sat at a good angle when my legs were fully straightened. Again, this took two attempts to get right (and there are some dowels plugging the first hole).
The 'head' of the swing arm is a scrap of softwood. This can bite into the workpiece without leaving a mark. The scrap was in my shed when I moved into the house.
The 'rest' was made of a piece of fascia board (another skip find) that I propped up with a piece of 2x4, cut to the appropriate angle. When my legs are extended, the swing arm meets the rest so that there is no space between it and the head. This grips whatever I am carving nicely.
To test the horse, I set about making a new handle for my froe from a length of sycamore. It was a simple job - a straight, round length with a taper at the bottom. It was much nicer working with the shave horse than the bench vise though and I knocked it out in 10 or 15 minutes.
I'll be improving the workholding a bit in the future. I think grooving the rest so that roundwood has three points of contact, rather than one on the rest and one on the head, will help. I might also make a second set of swing arms, this time that sit outside the body of the horse.
Cheers for looking!
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