Thread: Dog 'hobby horse'

In the past, Charlie has made his grandkids a couple of hobby horses at about the time they turn two years of age. The first was a pink horse... https://www.woodworkforums.com/f174/hobby-horse-86293/ The second was a giraffe... https://www.woodworkforums.com/f174/g...iraffe-109591/


This time, the kiddie's dad asked that I make a dog hobby horse since the little girl has a liking of dogs.


By now, of course, I know the dimensions required and have the routine down pat but I decided to make this animal three dimensional.

The first step is to find a suitable cartoon or bit of clip art on the internet from which to get a pattern for the head. A simple form of picture is best because, apart from making it simple to cut out, the simpler shapes are less likely to have hazardous sharp points on them. I found this jolly little fellow ...

Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch


So enlarging the image so that the length of the head is about 200 mm on A4 paper, consistent with what I have previously found to work well with the little kids, I print off a copy of the head and glue it to a piece of 19 mm thick pine board so that I have a ready made template for the head. Then with a bit of pencil work with French curves, I produce the outline of the rest of the hobby horse to have an overall length of 760mm.


The shape gets cut out on a bandsaw and then sanded to the line. On this occasion, I have benefited from having a new oscillating spindle sander to make sanding the inside curves dead simple and quick.


My design is to make the animal three dimensional by adding a round nose and floppy cow skin ears.


In fact, I have trouble finding a spherical wooden ball of suitable dimensions for the nose so, instead, I use a 45 mm wooden bead obtained from a specialist bead shop.


The cow skin is an off-cut obtained from the Reverse Garbage shop in Brisbane. That shop sells factory off-cuts of all sorts of materials that would otherwise end up as landfill.


So the wooden bead gets a slot cut into it to fit over the appropriate spot and then gets glued and the little string hole filled. A slot gets cut into the head so that a one piece set of ears can be passed through the slot ready for being held in place with a tailored wooden wedge and glue - and progress is being made ...



Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch



Some sanding, including sanding away the glued original cartoon picture, plus a few coats of paint , the affixing of some moveable plastic eyes with double sided tape and the fitting of the ears and, voila! .... we have a dog "hobby horse"....



Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch


Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch



Getting the ears hanging right is simply a case of cutting out some paper versions first and trying them to see if they hang OK. If the shape is too even in dimension, the ears cover the eyes so most of the shape of the ears needs to be towards the back.


It is important to make this sort of a toy well in advance of the birthday so that the paint, especially spray cans of enamel, can cure and harden well before it gets dragged around the concrete.


Now, let's see. I wonder what shape will be requested for the next hobby horse?


.