So I wanted to make a rocking horse for my 2-year-old grandson.  I looked and looked for the perfect design and found this design from an old 2009 post from fine woodworking.  This led me to Woodstore.net for the full-size plans which cost $20 and to Heritage Wood Specialties who sells the bridal and hardware parts for $15.  The plan comes with full-size images of each part that you cut out and trace.  I decided to make plywood templates first for all the parts so I could trim the final pieces to size with my router and shaper and to also have them later should I want to build another rocking horse.  There are a lot of curves to this project and some crazy angles but if you take your time and make the suggested jigs you will have great success.  The design calls for the horse body to be made from gluing two 3/4″ boards together but next time I would mill out an 8/4 board to thickness for a more uniform look. The mane, forelock, tail and saddle are pretty small pieces and are best roughed out using a jigsaw rather than a band saw.  With the exception of the forelock and the eyebrows which I carved, I created some jigs to hold the smaller templates in place while using a small router to shape and smooth the parts to size.  Even with using a router, I found there was still a lot of scraping and final sanding work. Finally, I turned the maple handle on the lathe, cut the bridal to size and then finished the piece using a garnish non-waxed shellac flakes cut with denatured alcohol.

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