Placing the body upside down I filled each leg opening with epoxy and then inserted the new legs with the dowels into the foam/ epoxy. I then carved out the foam in the body where the legs were to be attached. In each leg I drilled a hole and inserted a dowel "bone" which I glued in place. In order to attach the legs to the body I saws the leg opening straight (where the old legs had broken off) and then cut the new epoxy legs to the correct length. I repeated this process for the other missing leg and then placed the "half" leg in the bottom of the mold and then filled this with epoxy along with filling the "good" leg with epoxy as well. Once the epoxy cured I took it out of the mold and had a perfect copy of the leg. I filled the mold with the epoxy and waited overnight. I then taped ttogether he mold and mixed up a batch of 2 part epoxy. Once this has cured, I split the container and the fflexible old allowing me to pull out the leg.
Basically the process is to mix up a batch of molding material and place it in a plastic container that will hold the leg. In my closet of "stuff" I had a mold making kit so I took the drastic step of cutting off the only good leg and using it to make a mold (I had taken pictures of this step but they were lost in a computer crash).
In looking at the existing legs I noticed that they were ssymmetrical here was not much difference between the right and left legs.
Riding bouncy toys plus#
The other plus is that with the foam I now have something stable to attach the new legs into. This not only reinforced the body but it also give a base on which to rebuild the missing face. I chose the most rigid available, taped over the holes and filled the cavity with the foam. I decided to fill the body with spray foam insulation. The first thing that I needed to do was to reinforce the body as the plastic was pretty brittle after all these years. The rest of the cost was for paint and supplies.
Riding bouncy toys free#
The horse cost me $30 (it should have been free based on its condition but I really wanted it!). If you have the required woodworking tools or can reuse parts from an old rocking chair the price would be cut in half. The total cost of this project was approximately $250 with $125 coming from the custom CNC cut rockers. Make sure you have a secure work surface to work onĪs this is meant for a child to use, take extra care in sanding and joining parts so that there are no sharp edges or objects exposed Read safety instructions on all materials (especially epoxy and paint as fumes can be hazzardous) (airbrush paint)Ĭlear coat sealer (for wood and plastic body) Purple metail for saddle (airbrush paint) Wood Rockers (rescue from an old rocking chair or Make your own - I had mine CNC cut through an online service)Ģ Part Epoxy (for recreating missing parts & glueing cracks)Ĭasting compound (to make molds of missing parts) Vintage Spring Horse (from craigslist or someones garage) To make the project easier you can start with a horse that is in better condition and then it just becomes mounting it to the rockers with no fixing or painting actually required. Just basic DIY skills are needed along with some painting ability, there is nothing in this project that should stop anyone at any skill level from recreating this. So what do I make? My brain churned and I figured I could fix it & improve it by adding wooden rockers and turn this horse into a sophisticated rocking horse! But my stars were aligned and I get a text from the little girls mom on their vacation with her little girl riding on a carousel, she loved it and went back 3 times that week.
So here I was owner of a brittle crumbling plastic horse on a dangerous metal stand and a little girl with her 2nd birthday coming up (with her mother being super protective!). Of course as I was getting out of the elevator the door ended up closing on the horses head and the left side of his face just crumbled. When I went to see it it was in a lot rougher shape than I had hoped (missing two legs with a third broken off and also missing an ear along with various cracks) but I enjoy a challenge and knew I could fix it so I loaded it up and took it home. When I saw one of these spring horses come up on Craigslist I knew I had to buy it and restore it for my god-daughter. Also if you fell (or got pushed) off there were four steel poles sticking out that you would land on. When I was a kid my sister and I had a "Spring Horse" we loved to play on this but the steel springs were dangerous, they had sharp edges and when they expanded little fingers could easily get pinched. Growing up in the late 60's / early 70's toys were in a transition may were a combination of plastic and steel but without today's safety features.
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