This is probably the boring part – restoration of the frame.
Structurally the frame was in excellent condition, all the joints were firm and the timber in good condition. The exception with the timber was that the ends had been badly chewed or scratched by a pet. Rather than replacing these timbers I removed a short amount from each end and rounded the corners. There was still a little bit of damage but barely noticeable.
I then sanded all the timber back to bare wood and applied several coats of undercoat. To this I then applied 3 coats of an oil based gloss enamel and to add extra protection a final 2 coats of water based gloss floor varnish. You can see from the picture that the end result was a nice bright red finish that will hopefully stand up to many years of wear.
I then added non-slip pads to the base so that it will stay in place on our timber floor when in use.
The hangers (and their covers) that are black in the image above were very poorly painted red when I started the restoration. I sanded them back to bare metal and applied multiple coats of oil based gloss black enamel paint.
Previously the rocking horse squeaked terrible when used, so hopefully to overcome this I am going to apply lithium grease to support runner that is fastened to the frame (under the black covers).