Experience and Mistakes

Back when I put together the first rocking horse which I called a prototype because it was not going to be once of the horse I was going to give as a gift.  That was because some tear out in the counter bores, I knew just plugging the screw holes wouldn't take care of the problem.  At that time the plan was to fill the holes and paint the rocking horse.Then I got the idea to distress the painted finished, but I didnt want light colored pine showing through the paint.  That meant the first step was to stain the parts. 

 After staining the parts I applied a coat of shellac to seal in the stain and to help keep from sanding through the stain while distressing the paint. But I couldn't bring myself to paint it.  I am sucker for wood and even this pine looks to good to paint in my eyes. That meant I had to do something with the torn out counter bores.  I went ahead and applied 2 more coats of shellac. I then used stain-able wood filler to fill the screw holes and once dry I carefully sanded the filler flush.

 I had experimented on a scrap of wood and found that since the wood had several coats of shellac on it that it was easy to apply stain to the wood filler with out changing the color of the wood around it.

 Here you can see how the filler took the stain.

 I painted all the saddle pieces with some paint we had on hand. The shellac, which had been sanded with 320 was a very good base for a nice smooth coat of paint.

 After the stain had a chance to dry I applies 2 more coats of shellac to the entire project.

 Here is the finished rocking horse.

While using the wood filler may not have been the preferred way I think it came out pretty good. Something I was thinking while I was working on this was how experience doesn't mean not making mistakes, but knowing how to hide them.