Charleville
23rd November 2008, 06:03 AM
I am currently building the toddlers' rocking horse "Krackles" with a pattern from the Wooden Memories site, http://www.woodenmemories.com/kra.htm
This horse is a pretty thick beast with a nice stylised fat head but which so far in my construction phase tends to tip the rocker forward.
I intend to counter this at the penultimate stage of construction before gluing him up by turning him into an airhead and drilling large holes within the layers of wood in his head below the surface overlay and by so doing lighten his head as much as I can.
So I have two questions for anyone who may have built "Krackles", please...
1. All the pictures of Krackles by proud builders that I have found on the internet do tend to show the horse tilting down at the front, obviously due to the uneven weight distribution caused by the thick head. (See pictures below) Is this the experience of other constructors, please?
2. I have seen lots of pictures of the horse itself, and one with a kiddie standing beside it, but I have seen no pictures with kids actually on it. My concern is that the horse is pretty heavy and wide and whether it is easy enough for kiddies to ride and be comfortable on or whether I need to drill out a lot more inside his body to reduce his weight. The thickness of mine is wider than the pattern because I have used 40 mm wide boards rather than the 31mm in the pattern albeit by a minor design change, the thickness is only 4 mm wider at the spot that the kids actually sit on.
So the question is of any constructors of Krackles please, do the kids actually use it?
http://img.skitch.com/20081122-cs1yas4rji7bumw2u9aaqw6n3s.preview.jpg (http://skitch.com/charleville2/hcwf/re-page-1-1)
Click for full size (http://skitch.com/charleville2/hcwf/re-page-1-1) - Uploaded with plasq (http://plasq.com)'s Skitch (http://skitch.com)
This horse is a pretty thick beast with a nice stylised fat head but which so far in my construction phase tends to tip the rocker forward.
I intend to counter this at the penultimate stage of construction before gluing him up by turning him into an airhead and drilling large holes within the layers of wood in his head below the surface overlay and by so doing lighten his head as much as I can.
So I have two questions for anyone who may have built "Krackles", please...
1. All the pictures of Krackles by proud builders that I have found on the internet do tend to show the horse tilting down at the front, obviously due to the uneven weight distribution caused by the thick head. (See pictures below) Is this the experience of other constructors, please?
2. I have seen lots of pictures of the horse itself, and one with a kiddie standing beside it, but I have seen no pictures with kids actually on it. My concern is that the horse is pretty heavy and wide and whether it is easy enough for kiddies to ride and be comfortable on or whether I need to drill out a lot more inside his body to reduce his weight. The thickness of mine is wider than the pattern because I have used 40 mm wide boards rather than the 31mm in the pattern albeit by a minor design change, the thickness is only 4 mm wider at the spot that the kids actually sit on.
So the question is of any constructors of Krackles please, do the kids actually use it?
http://img.skitch.com/20081122-cs1yas4rji7bumw2u9aaqw6n3s.preview.jpg (http://skitch.com/charleville2/hcwf/re-page-1-1)
Click for full size (http://skitch.com/charleville2/hcwf/re-page-1-1) - Uploaded with plasq (http://plasq.com)'s Skitch (http://skitch.com)