The above bookends were created from a pattern found in the Scroll Saw Workshop magazine.  I believe it was issue #3.  This is a relatively new magazine, but it seems to be a good value at $19.95 for a year's subscription.  It is chock full of scroll saw and intartisia patterns.

I made these bookends for my wife for Mother's Day, 2001.  She was pleasantly surprised and they now occupy a space on her desk.

The frames are made from red oak.  The actual horse portion is made from 8/4 culls purchased at the Home Depot, which was then resawn on my HF bandsaw, jointed on my Grizzly jointer, planed on my Delta 560 planer, cut to size on my Jet tablesaw, and then finally cut out on my DeWalt DW788 scrollsaw.

The next steps were to sand the edges of the curve using my HF drillpress, outfitted with a Delta oscillating spindle sander attachment, and then sand the surface with my PC Random Orbit Sander.  I made final sanding of the inside cuts with a small needle file set.  Finally, I freehand rounded over the edges of the horse portion with a 1/2" roundover bit chucked in my DeWalt router, and then hand sanded the rounded over portion.

The base and sides were made from some red oak staircase runner cutoffs that I received from a friend (thanks, Bob!).  I planed, jointed, and cut these to size.  The roundover on the edges was achieved with a 1/2" bit.  For this operation, I turned my router over and put it in my woodworking vise, and then guided the pieces into the bit.  No table was used, just the surface of the router base.  (Still need to build a new router table...).  A little finish sanding, and I was ready for assembly.

The SSW pattern called for using screws to attach the pieces, but I opted for miniature biscuits instead.  I used the R3 size with my Ryobi miniature biscuit cutter.  There are two biscuits in the base to hold the picture, and one more to hold the side.  There is one biscuit in the side to join it to the picture.

For final glue-up, I tried to find some way to clamp it all together and still glue everything in one step.  (This was still in the dry fitting stage).  Having failed at that, I simply glued and assembled everything and opted for using no clamps at all.  As you can see from the picture, it still came out pretty good.

For a finish, I sprayed three coats of lacquer, sanding with 000 grit steel wool between coats.  The final coat received a 0000 steel wool rub-down after drying for 48 hours. 

Below are a few more smaller pictures that you can click on to enlarge.