The Tinker Thinker: Project: Christmas Ponies (Part 2)

At the end of my first pony post, I had the heads cut and shaped the way I wanted with the rasp. From there, I sanded them with 80, 100, and 150 grit paper, and drilled the holes for handles and sticks.

I first drilled a 5/32" pilot hole all the way through, so I could drill from both sides with the spade bit, to avoid splitting out the exit hole.

I then fitted the handles. I had to overdrill the holes a touch, so I nailed the handles in from the underside, then filled the gap with Bolivian wood putty - sawdust and glue.

I still hadn't decided what to do about the eyes. I originally planned to carve them in the sunk relief style. My wife suggested buying black marbles and fitting them, but I never got around to buying black marbles. I did, however, on a hardware run, find some cheap woodcarving chisels:

So, I ended up doing it the way I had thought originally:

Blackened with a Sharpie:

I should mention: this eye carving business was happening late at night on the 22nd and I was running out of time! They got their first coat of polyurethane around 1:00am on the 23rd:

In the morning, I gave them a quick sand with 220 grit paper and gave them another coat. Meanwhile, I was working on their manes. I made their scalps from brown vinyl I had found for the purpose, punched holes in it, looped yarn through, then secured the loops underneath. Before attaching to the heads, I coated the underside with glue to stiffen the yarn and lock it together as well as stick it to the wood.