Saddle Horn Cover

[dbusarow]

I'm looking for a generic pattern for a saddle horn cover. Cap and wing style. I know i saw one posted a while back but I've searched and searched and can't find it now.

Thanks!

Dan

[horsewreck]

A good reference on saddle horn covering is Vol. 1 of Al Stohlman's saddle making book. It has various patterns for for different heights, caps, lean, etc. It would be hard to have one pattern for all horn shapes. I think you can get the book at Tandy stores, and it's worth the money if your self teaching yourself saddlery...

[dbusarow]

I just finished adding the saddle horn to my wife's saddle and thought I should update this topic in case anyone else was interested in the future.

First I bought the Stohlman Encycolpedia of Saddle Making recommended by horsewreck, volumes 1 and 2. Volume 1 has the patterns, volume 2 has the actual instructions. If you love leather and horses, buy volume 1 even if you know you will never work on a saddle. It is just chock full of good information. If you think you might touch a saddle some day you may as well get volume 2 as well. And if you know you are get all three.

Anyway, I didn't think to take pictures at the beginning stages but here's what I did.

First I bought a saddle horn. Got it from The Boise Foundry mentioned in an earlier post. Nice folks to deal with.

http://www.boisefoun...ddlecatalog.htm

Next I brought the saddle into the garage and took the swell cover off. The cover on this saddle was not glued on so this step wen't pretty smoothly. I imagine that if the cover were glued on it could get real ugly.

Next I positioned the horn on the swell where I wanted it and used a Sharpie to draw an outline of the base and feet. Then I used a Dremel with a coarse sanding drum to dig out a channel for the horn to fit into. Since this tree is just some plastic and plywood with no rawhide that step went pretty easily. If you have a real tree expect more work to get the horn mounted to the tree. Here is a picture showing things when I was almost done but without the swell cover.

After mounting the horn, cut the leather to the patterns in the book. The patterns need to be redone to match the size of your horn but one of the nice things about the books is that they explain WHY they are doing things the way they do so you can make those adjustments.

Cutting, molding, gluing and sewing up the horn was actually pretty straightforward for me. Similar concepts to building a wet molded holster.

Once done cut a hole in the swell cover and mount.

There are a lot of mistakes on this and close up they really show. I'm sure you can even see some in these pictures. But my wife doesn't see them and is really happy

Dan