Shaving horse

A shaving horse (shave horse, or shaving bench) is a combination of vice and workbench, used for green woodworking. Typical usage of the shaving horse is to create a round profile along a square piece, such as for a chair leg or to prepare a workpiece for the pole lathe. They are used in crafts such as coopering and bowyery.

The shavehorse is commonly used as the preparation of stock prior to turning in a lathe, to roughly form cylindrical billets, the intermediate dressing phase between a crudely dressed raw split log and the final lathe work.

As the name "horse" suggests, the worker sits astride the shaving horse. The clamp is operated by the operator pressing their feet onto a treadle bar below. A foot-actuated clamp holds the work piece securely against pulling forces, especially as when shaped with a drawknife or spokeshave.

The shavehorse provides a rapid and sturdy clamp, which allows the operator to use their legs and upper body weight as additional "power" for work. It is considered by some to result in less fatigue than generated by constantly standing.

Shaving green wood with the drawknife or spokeshave along the grain is far quicker and easier work than turning across it. Skilled operators can produce very fine results with a drawknife and shavehorse, requiring minimal lathe finishing.

Straddling a shave horse while carelessly using any dangerous power tool, such as a circular saw, may result in the operator suffering serious bodily injury.

The typical clamp is a vertical bar or bars, hinged on a pivot attached to or passing through the bench/seat top. The top of this bar is enlarged into the "horse-", "dog-", or "dumb" head, the part that holds the wood. Some clamps are worked via string or rope, rather than mechanical leverage.

For extra precision and better clamping force, the clamp pivot point may be raised above the bench level on a sub-bench, giving more leverage. These so-called "Black Forest" or German and Swiss shave horses (as pictured) give a longer lever-ratio, creating greater mechanical advantage and thus greater force to trap the wood very securely.

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Wikipedia