Baltic Plywood Horses

Browsing the web I stumbled across a pattern for making cardboard horses. Ann Wood, the craftsy designer, drew up three patterns (about 6-inch sized horses) and made a stampede of 100 cardboard horses. Her horses have been widely posted on the web and so creative that I took a closer look at her website. Very creative and suitable for almost all ages! But it kind of amazed me that so much effort would be put into cardboard horses rather than more enduring wooden horses ... that's a lot of work for just a cardboard frame, so I thought I would make some wooden ones.

Baltic pine plywood is the way to go. It cuts easily, shapes easily, doesn't break down like other plywood that has poor wood-fill composition, and it also takes paint well. I bought a 4'x2' sheet and proceeded to trace out the horses via carbon paper. OK, that took a looooong time. Actually I'm glad I didn't count the hours that went into making these, but once I got started, I wanted to do quality work so paid a little more attention to detail than if I were making something out of cardboard.

Tools needed:

• carbon paper
• needle-nose pliers
• buttons -- four for each horse
• twisty-ties (free from the produce section at the store)
• water colors
• paint brushes
• markers (optional)
• paper cups and paper towels
• Baltic pine plywood
• sandpaper
• drill
• scroll-saw
• optional: lace, yarn, ribbon, etc for manes and tails (hot-glue gun)

Here is the step-by-step process:

• traced out the three different patterns of horses (carbon paper)
• with a scroll-saw cut the horses out piece by little piece (I didn't follow the tracings because I wanted personality and not clone horses; that made the cutting a lot faster and involved a little creativity)
• sanded each little piece by hand
• drilled holes for fastening on the legs
• painted the pieces with water colors (touch up with markers)
• fastened the pieces together with wire (twisty-ties from the store -- free), buttons and a needle-nose pliers

Now what to do with them? I made 39 horses out of the 4'x2' sheet of Baltic pine plywood. I've given a few away but the rest, not sure. My younger bro piped up that they would make a really cool Christmas tree, and I think he's right, so the horses are packed away for Christmas.  Think I might get some more Baltic pine plywood and make a lot of white stars to balance out the color on the tree.

And now for niece (10) and nephew's (6 1/2) contribution. They had so much fun creating their horses. Now they're requesting snowflakes and stars. Hmm, we'll see.