Pack Saddle Plans

[Travisc406]

I have built a few pack saddles in the past and want to build one for the upcoming season, but I need to find plans somewhere if anyone knows. I am building sawbuck style. I thought about buying one but what is the fun in that? Any help would be great. Travis

[oldtimer]

I have built a few pack saddles in the past and want to build one for the upcoming season, but I need to find plans somewhere if anyone knows. I am building sawbuck style. I thought about buying one but what is the fun in that? Any help would be great. Travis

I bought a book on the subject from High Country Horse, LLC.

"A do-it -yourself guide to improvements, repairs and complete rigging of crossbuck& Decker packsaddles" and it covers most of what you need to know to make a pack saddle.

www.highcountryhorse.net

/ Knut

[Travisc406]

thank you so much!!!! That will work great! Travis

[mulepackin]

thank you so much!!!! That will work great! Travis

I have a copy of the US Forest Service Specs for decker pack saddles. I'm sure they can be modified for a sawbuck. PM me if you are interested.

[wyomingcowboy]

fast forward a few years........Does anyone have plans to make your own pack saddle? I have that book from highcountry horse but it has nothing about making the tree in it. I exchanged emails with the author and he suggested not making one, but rather buying one.....what's the fun in that?!?!?

[thenrie]

I guess you're still looking, so I'll chime in. I've been researching for quite some time as well, trying to find a plan for a decent pack saddle, since I'm planning a horse pack trip from the Mexican Border to the Canadian Border on the Great Western Trail (approximately). I plan to make most of my own gear. The trip is planned for 2015.

I have found nothing that tells much about making a pack saddle. However, if you are decently skilled at woodworking, or even if you're just a decent do-it-yourselfer, there is nothing about a crossbuck pack saddle tree that should present any problems to you. There is nothing magic or technical about the way they're made.

A few points I've picked up:

- Most of the packsaddles I've seen have the cross-buck part made of a good hardwood, such as oak, maple, or hickory. However, having used crossbuck packsaddles for years, there's no reason you couldn't use something like yellow pine or even poplar, except that they would begin to show wear pretty quickly, and they would be less likely to survive a "wreck". Hardwood is expensive, but for the amount you would need for the crossbucks, it's negligible. Use oak or something similar.

- For the bars, use pine or poplar. My choice would be poplar. It's classified as a hardwood, but has a very fibrous and tough grain that is a bit flexible, yet very hard to break. Old timers say the best bars are made from cottonwood, but that's hard to get, since it's not a popular wood for any kind of woodwork. Poplar is very similar to cottonwood in grain and hardness. You can get poplar at any Home Depot or Lowes, or any other lumber place. With the glues we have nowadays, you can glue-up three 3/4" boards to a thickness of 2-1/4" and make a pretty good set of bars from that. Still, there's no reason that bars made from construction grade #2 hem-fir or pine from the local lumber yard wouldn't do as well. The wood is softer, so the joints might give up a little sooner than with poplar. Might not last 150 years, but then neither will you. Again, a few board feet of poplar is not that expensive.

- I have seen some saddle makers who use regular riding saddle bars for their packsaddles, figuring, I suppose, that regular saddle bars are better fitted to the animal's back. Not necessarily so. Riding saddle bars have a cutout in them to allow for the rider's leg to comfortably rest over the bar. No need for that on a pack saddle. Also, most pack saddles I have seen have fairly narrow bars. I have looked into the reason for this, having seen older crossbuck pack saddles with very wide bars, and have come to the conclusion that some pack saddle makers use 6" wide lumber ( which is actually 5-1/2" wide) for their bars simply because it is less expensive than wider lumber. The wider the bars (within reason) the more surface area carries the weight on the animal's back, and the less chance you have of pressure points (provided the bars are fitted well). I would recommend making your bars from 1 X 8 poplar, glued-up to the desired thickness (2-1/4" should do it, but you might want to start with 3"). They seem to be generally between 20 and 22" long for a full-sized horse or mule.

- Most riding saddles have the bars set between 92 and 88 degrees or so to fit the horse's back (90* being about average for most QHs). The bars are also carved with some twist and arch to fit the curvatures of the horse's back from withers to flanks. They are also carved convex to settle into the muscle structure of the horse's back and resist moving around without causing pressure points. Most crossbucks I have handled seem to be cut to 90 degrees or a bit less, and are cut on the lower ends to fit to whatever bar angle you choose for your particular pack animal. However, since you are going to fit the bars to the animal anyway, the exact crossbuck angle really doesn't matter much, as long as it's not greater than the bar angle (you want the lower legs of the crossbucks to fade into the bars, rather than stick out away from them). Mules' backs normally have less withers and a flatter back, so the twist and arch is a bit flatter than with most horses, however, some mules' backs are close enough to a horse's conformation that they use horse gear without problems. In the book "Packer's Field Manual" by Bob Hoverson, he shows how to take a raw pack saddle and fit it to the particular animal it will be used on. He puts chalk on the animal's back, then puts the saddle in place, then carves away everything that touches chalk until the bars touch chalk equally along their entire length and width. He uses a simple wood rasp and does it by hand. One could easily shorten the process by roughing-out the bars with a body grinder and a coarse disc, and then going to the rasp for fine-tuning.

- The best made crossbuck pack saddles are put together with glues and copper or steel rivets, rather than screws or nails. Some also wrap the wood joints on the cross-bucks with rawhide. I'm sure the rawhide helped on the old-time saddles and it looks really nice, but with modern glues and rivets or bolts, the rawhide becomes superfluous. The only good I could see for it might be to ease the rigging and panier straps from wearing on the wood crossbucks. Make your wood joints tight and precise and you won't have problems.

- Some makers angle their crossbucks away from each other, such that the lower ends are angled toward each other on the bars. The only functionality for this that I can figure is to give them a longer contact surface with the bars. I don't believe it makes much difference if the crossbucks are attached will to the bars with glues and rivets. Crossbucks seem to commonly be about 12" apart, but I don't think there's a particular standard or specification.

- Crossbuck packsaddles are still used extensively in the southwestern US, but in the northern parts, Decker-style packsaddles have been the standard since the early 1900s. After doing my research I decided to go with Deckers, because of the versatility. You can purchase arches from suppliers such as Bork Saddlery Hardware (beautifully cast in bronze for $80 per pair) or you can easily make your own set by heating and bending 5/8" steel rod (well, easy for some) to your own specs and welding tabs to the ends. The arches are commonly set 12" apart on the bars. Just like crossbucks, some makers angle the arches away from each other, but it seems to be more of a "taste" thing than functional. For a Decker, a cover called an aparajo will go over the pack saddle and the arches will protrude up through slots made for them, so unless you plan to make your own aparajo as well, you will need to purchase one and make sure you make your saddle to fit it.

- As for rigging, I'm planning on borrowing a pack saddle and simply duplicating what's there. You can also find the old U.S. military specs for Decker-style saddles and rigging in various places on the Internet.

- You can visit my website at westerntrailrider.com and check out my blog post about pack saddles. It's not about construction, but about deciding which style to go with, but I put quite a few pictures on it that might help. I do not claim to be any sort of authority on packsaddles or their construction, however, the above are some things I have concluded from my research and experience.

Attached photos: The decker is from the Nikkels' website (rodnikkel.com), who is a member here, using the arches from Bork Saddlery Hardware. The crossbuck photo I got from google images a while back, so I don't know whom to credit.

Edited September 16, 2013 by thenrie