Wooden Triceratops

I do a little bit of woodworking in my garage and I got asked if I could make a wooden triceratops dinosaur. I googled images of what Triceratops is believed to have looked like and decided to make one from cheap,planed pine timber which is readily available from a timber yard or DIY store. I had already made a slightly different version which is on my Pinterest (Steve Loughlin) but wanted to try a more ‘3d’ look. I purchased a 6’ length of pine 120mm wide x 18mm deep which I thought was adequate for a decent size body.

Length of pine timber.

Vice/vise or clamp.

Bandsaw ideally although a fret saw or even a hand saw would suffice but would take a lot longer.

Sander or sandpaper.

Wood glue.

Pyrography wood burner (not absolutely necessary).

First I drew a freehand Triceratops outline on cardboard and cut it out to use as a template. For this template it’s important to draw the outline with legs and both downward facing horn and upward pointing horn. Next draw around the template on the timber 3 times, remembering to draw two bodies with legs and downward pointing horn and one body with no legs and upward pointing horn. If you use pencil to draw round the template, the legs and horn can be rubbed out as required on each part so you end up with the correct body outlines.

The completed triceratops will consist of three glued-together pieces to form one body. The three pieces drawn on the timber now need cutting out. I used a bandsaw which is very easy and quick, but a fretsaw would do the job as would a hand saw but will obviously take a lot longer. Remember that the piece with the upward pointing horn has no legs and will be the middle section of the completed dinosaur. The other two pieces should be exactly the same and will form the outside sections.

At this point, prior to any gluing, sand the body parts to form points on the horns and take the edges off the 4 legs and round them off slightly. I used a belt sander for pointing the horns and a mini detail sander for the legs and other difficult to access areas, although sandpaper will do the same job, but slower.

When you are happy with the shape of the legs and horns, the body pieces can be glued together. Spread a thin layer of wood glue on both sides of the middle piece (the piece with no legs and upward pointing horn, remember!) and attach the outer pieces. Place the pieces in a clamp or vice, wipe off excess glue and allow the glue to set. I use Evostik wood glue for all my wood projects as I find it fairly quick setting and it forms an extremely strong bond, but any decent wood glue will do. The three pieces will probably require some further sanding to make the joints perfectly flush.

The glued up body will now require more sanding. I ‘round’ the body off on the belt sander and sand the tail to a point and also remove a little of the jaw to make it slightly more pointed and not as wide. I use the detail sander to sand the joins flush with each other as the pieces will not be exactly the same shape when cut out.

Triceratops mouth is more ‘beak’ like, so the last stage prior to adding the collar is to cut the mouth out. I did this on the bandsaw, lying the body flat on the saw bed and making two cuts to remove a section of wood to create an open mouth.

This is probably the most difficult step….Take a piece of pine timber and measure the thickness of the triceratops body immediately behind the top horns and approx 1” down. Cut out a section of the timber to match these dimensions. Try this to fit over the body and adjust depth/width accordingly. Then draw a semi-circular crest with a number of points around the circumference. Cut out this shape. There’s quite a lot of trial and error in this stage…..Once you have a good fit, glue in place to rest on the start of the top horns.

I use the pyrography tool to burn eyes into the design and also a hint of colour where the toes would be, at the point of the horns and the tip of the tail. This can be done with permanent marker or stick on ‘boggly’ eyes if you don’t have a burning tool.