#fiftyshavesofwood

The story of how my idea of building my artisan shaving horse "Fifty Shaves Of Wood" evolved.

Over the year's I have used many different types of Shaving Horse. Some with three legs for use on uneven ground, some with four legs, all of these always seemed to be made for tall people and to be honest they were uncomfortable. Giving you a numb posterior and pins and needles in your legs and a bad back. Being as you spend a lot of time sat on a shaving horse I felt it is important that the horse should be comfortable. 

Most traditional type shaving horses also take up a lot of room in your workshop, OK if your in the woods but not if you are in a small shed or garage. 

When I came to deciding what to build, my workshop was small garage on the side of our house at the time, not the large woodland one I have the luxury of today.

So I trawled the internet looking at lots of photographs of shaving horses of all sorts of shapes and sizes. 

I decided that my design would need an adjustable seat with folding legs. The best artisan design I came up with for that purpose, was to make the body of the horse as a rail system, this would allow me to mount the head and remove it when the horse is folded away, it also meant that the seat holes could be spaced out, allowing for users with a taller stance than myself. The seat would have a plate on the bottom, with holes of the same spacing as the rail so that could then be located on the rail using Oak pegs to hold the seat it in place. Being totally bespoke this would be easy to obtain the result needed to make the seat both comfortable and fully adjustable.

The design by Peter Galbraith, of a ratchet dumb head horse struck me as being very useful. Peter very kindly forwarded me the plans for his horse design. I set to sorting out the timber I would use for the construction of the head. I then built my rail to height that would be comfortable for me to sit at.

The timber I used in the making of "Fifty Shaves Of Wood" was as follows, Brown Oak for the head, English Elm, Burr Elm for the tractor seat,Larch for the rail spacers, Horse Chestnut for the rails, Yew foot pegs and Four hundred and Twenty Five year old Box wood for the legs.


The fixings I used for the fold up legs and head were, 501 Stainless steel, Brass screws and Brass Dome nuts, Leather for the jaw protector.

The whole process of making "Fifty Shaves of Wood" took around a week and the use of a friends workshop for the machining that needed doing.

I have recently added another tool head to "Fifty Shaves Of Wood" allowing me to use the other end of it as a Spoon carving Mule.

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