Fitting the Eyes and Mounting the Horse

I described in an earlier post how I made sockets for the supplied glass eyes using a 22mm spade bit:

The right eye socket, before the horse was dyed a darker brown.

The instructions that came with the kit suggested attaching the eyes using wood filler as glue. I didn't feel confident that this would work, having never tried it before, so I decided to use epoxy instead.



Having checked that the eyes were going to fit ok and that everything was clean and dry, I mixed up some quick-setting (five minute) epoxy and spread some on the back of each eye, then used some tape to hold them in place while the glue cured. This worked very well.


You made a believer, out of me.

The only things left at this stage were to fit the (real horse hair!) mane, forelock and tail, saddle 'er up, and mount her to the stand. But she looked so good, I couldn't resist mounting her straight away (stop sniggering at the back, Jenkins!):


Very cool. The combined horse and stand are very heavy so I never intended to mount the horse permanently at this stage - that would wait until she was safely inside the house on Christmas Eve - but it was great to see the whole thing looking so good.

Next time, I'll talk about fitting the mane, forelock and tail.

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