Making the Santa’s Sleigh

The Santa’s sleigh is more involved than the reindeer. This is because there are more parts and the painting requires masking to make the sleigh body red and the runners black. Here is the Lightburn file.

Like the reindeer, I found 0.203” plywood at Lowes. You may have to resize the slots and tabs using the Lightburn 1.3.01 “Resize Slots in Selection” tool for different thicknesses of plywood.

Cutting out the sleigh is straightforward. I cut the plywood into 24”x48” strips. The strip hangs out the front of my OMTech laser. One sleigh requires a section fo the plywood 24”x11”. The straight line across the bottom of the cutting slices the plywood so you can just move up the plywood to cut the next sleigh.

I cut the glittered adornment on the side of the sleigh out of 1/16” plywood from Amazon.

The painting takes a bit of careful work in stages to make everything come out looking good. The red is Rust-oleum Gloss Protective Enamel Regal Red. The black runners are Rust-oleum Gloss Protective Enamel Black. I undercoat the side adornments with Gold Rust-oleum Metallic Finish. I got all three colors at Lowes.

I apply two coats of red on the sleigh parts sanding lightly between coats. After the red dries on the sleigh sides, I mask the red with painter’s tape and paint the runners.

After painting the side adornments, I lightly brush on a coat of yellow woodworker’s glue and liberally sprinkle on the Extra Fine Gold Glitter from Hobby Lobby. Note that there are two mirrored sides so you have to apply glitter on different sides of the adornments. I only put glitter on the exposed side to make it easier to glue the adornments onto the sleigh.

Assembly is a bit tricky to get all the tabs and slots lined up and inserted. Super-glue holds it all together. After assembling the sleigh, I super-glue the adornments.

I hope you have as much fun making your own sleighs and giving them away to friends and family. I found everyone really likes them!