Benchtop Shave Pony - Update

Last week I wrote about making a shave pony, but I didn't have enough practice with it to figure out its faults.  Since then, I've used it more and made a couple key improvement.

Here's how it was last week

The first improvement is just a little thing, but it makes a nice difference.  The 7/16" oak dowels that are used to put the thing together could start migrating during use.  So I drilled a 1/16" hole in the dowels right where they exit the left upright and fashioned some cotter pins from paper clips.  It works perfectly - the dowels don't go anywhere.

Cotter pins holding the dowels in position

The next thing is really the important change.  In the first picture above, you can see that the foot pedal (treadle?) is simply one of the dowels going through the uprights.  This worked, but depending on the workpiece thickness, I might have to extend my leg too far to engage the clamp bar on the workpiece.  I saw a design for a removeable treadle on a few different shave pony videos.  It's a chunk of wood with notches cut at one end so that it fits between the two uprights.  The shoulders of those notches bear against the front edge of the uprights.  This treadle extends about 1 1/4" past the uprights and another piece of wood is screwed to its upper surface.  The edge of that piece bears against the back edge of the uprights.  This new treadle rests on the existing dowel and extends about 7-8" towards the user.

New treadle makes it MUCH easier to clamp a workpiece

Aside from those things, I cut a few inches of the bottom of the uprights - they were just too long.  And then I figured out how to store it when it's not in use.  If I move the clamp bar down to one of the holes near the treadle, the base can fold right in between the uprights.  If I needed to, I could also remove the treadle and it would be fairly flat.  I can store it in the ceiling rack (above the lifted garage door) I made some years ago.  And the dowel pins make sure it won't vibrate out of position and come crashing down on my head.

Stored safely in the ceiling rack

I used it all day today working on some spoons.  These changes made a great difference!