The selection of desirable wood is assembled, all parts are laid out and marked, then band sawn into rough shape. The belly block is cut using special jigs to accommodate the desired splay. The legs are shaped, sanded and notched to fit the belly block. Finally the legs and muscle blocks are epoxy laminated and clamped to the belly block.
Day Two:
The horse's head is sculpted using a combination of carbide grinding tools,
coping saw, hand gouges, contour rasps, etc. The head is joined to the
back piece with hard maple dowels, then the neck and shoulders are laminated
and clamped to the head.
The lower body block (with legs) is joined flat and blind-biscuit joint technique is demonstrated to secure the sides, check and butt. The whole upper assembly is then epoxied and clamped to cure overnight.
The boxy "Trojan horse" is put into the "chops" and serious rough wood removal begins. The class will explore several hand and machine powered tools for this purpose. Everything that does not look like a horse is removed, then the hand sculpting begins. Next, the six week process of hand rasping, scraping and hand sanding begins. Several shortcut techniques are demonstrated. The process can not be abbreviated to fit the time constraints of the seminar; therefore, we jump to an "almost finished" horse for day four.
Finish sanding, both machine and hand powered, continue. The first of many coats of tung oil is applied. The techniques to apply a real tail, mane and prosthetic eyes are shown. The horse is fitted with swing irons and "tuned" for the stand. The completed horse is used for class pictures. The remaining time is used for discussion of adaptations, other size horses and rocking horse rocker construction. The formal class concludes at noon, but participants are welcome to spend the afternoon asking about areas of personal concern and other size horse projects.