How are trees sized?

[Margaux]

Sorry for the redundancy, I posted a reply, but this seems more like a new topic.

Here it is again on fresh turf:

Let's say that you have a perfect profile of a horse's back, and are going to order a tree based on that data.

How is the tree made to take into account that there will be some leather, fleece, and saddle pad in between the tree, and the horse.

Obviously that distance is normal (perpendicular) to the tree (or horse's back), and that normal direction is sometimes down, sometimes slanting back and down, sometimes in and down, etc.

i.e. it's pretty complicated.

How do tree makers take these complex directions and distances into account?

Thanks in advance, Margaux.

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

A lot of people seem to have the idea that in order to fit a horse, a saddle tree must be a mirror image of their back. May I paraphrase your question to make sure I understand it. Are you asking, "How do you make a mirror image of a back plus skirts and padding when you only have the image of the back to work from?" Is this correct?

If so, then the answer is that we are not trying to make a mirror image of the horse's back. If you do that, you will end up with pressure points and interference with the horse when he moves. What we are doing is fitting the basic shape of the back and keeping the two rules:

1.) Don't dig in anywhere (build in adequate relief on the edges and tips).

2.) Have as much surface area as possible on the horse without breaking rule #1 (have the basic shape right so you don't create pressure points by having too much rock, too little rock, too much crown or just too small a bar for the weight of the rider).

This is why you don't need 52 different varieties of tree fits, nor do we want to have a saddle specially made for every individual horse. There is a range or segment of horse shapes that can use one "size" of tree without breaking rule #1, but they will have varying amounts of surface area in contact with the horse. So while some of those horses have a more ideal fit than others, the tree will still work OK on them IF you have enough surface area on your bars to start with. You can run into problems with rule #2 when the PSI gets too high due to very small bars that may not break rule #1, but that is not as common a problem. When you get outside that range of horses, you break rule #1 (too narrow a tree and the bottom edges of the bar dig in, too wide a tree and it falls forward and puts too much pressure on the inside of the bar edge up front, etc. etc.) That is when you need a different tree.

But you can have a tree that works well for a horse, and the way the saddle is built on it can mess up the fit. Or you can have a saddle that would work well and the way it is placed on the horse (and held in the wrong place via breast collars, etc.) messes up the fit. Or you can place a good saddle properly on a horse and the padding can mess up the fit. Or you can place a good saddle in the right place with good padding on a horse and the rider can cause pressure points by the way he rides. The tree maker has no control over any of these things (unless he also builds the saddle). If a tree fits a horse well with a ½" or 1" pad, it will work OK with 2". If it is on the edge of the range of good fit with a 1" pad, it may not work with 2" of padding. But if a guy decides he needs 4" of padding, he better not complain to us that the tree doesn't fit. That is above and beyond the realm of the allowance we can, or will, build into the tree.

At least, that is our take on the question. Others may think differently, of course…

[Margaux]

R&D,

Thanks for the reply. It was not exactly what I was asking.

It is clear that you cannot make the "mirror" image of the horse's back without accounting for, and we know that we want maximum contact with minimum pressure, no pinching, must allow for movement of the horse, and it's clear that odd/incorrect saddle construction and/or screwy padding will mess up the tree fitting properly.

I'm looking for the "how", and I don't see that explaination in your kind reply.

My question is HOW do tree makers take measurements that they make, or from Dennis Lane's system (of which I am a fan), and turn that into the proper tree?

Do they ask the owner how much padding he typically uses?

Do tree makers take the templates defined by Dennis and make inverses allowing for padding/leather/fleese and fit the tree to that?

Is this all "art", or is there an objective procedure for determining the proper tree?

On a new side note:

You are saying that you do not want a custom saddle ("...nor do we want to have a saddle specially made for every individual horse..."), and that confuses me.

I do want a saddle fit to my horse. If I want the best saddle for my horse, it seems like I would like it made for my horse, not one kinda like him.

Can you clarify that point or straighten me out?

Thanks again for clarification to any/all who have experience with this.

Margaux.

[daviD A Morris]

.....You are saying that you do not want a custom saddle ("...nor do we want to have a saddle specially made for every individual horse..."), and that confuses me.

I do want a saddle fit to my horse. If I want the best saddle for my horse, it seems like I would like it made for my horse, not one kinda like him.

Can you clarify that point or straighten me out?

.....

Margaux.

Margaux,

This a question that frequently arrises and I keep coming back to the analogy of footwear for people: Does everyone in your family wear the same size shoes? probably not, and yet - Has anyone in your family had a pair of shoes handmade especialy for just for them? Probably not. The only place this analogy fails is in the fact that saddles outlast horses. People sell horses and horses die (unfortunate but true) and then want to use their $4000 saddle on another horse. Not many people share shoes around like we do with saddles! If you are an elite athlete then you might get footwear specialy made for you, just like if your horse is competeing in $50,000 cutting or reining event you might spend an extra $1000 making sure his gear is going to give him every advantage.

There are varying degrees of fit, from perfect to just-good-enough to get by with. I have a pair of work boots (off the shelf quality and price) which I wear around my home and workshop area, have done for over a year, no problem, the fit is just good enough for the purpose. A couple of months ago I went to a freinds ranch to skin a dead cow for the rawhide. I had to walk about 1 to 1-1/2 miles in total up and down a very steep hill. Those same boots chewed the hell out of my feet, I had blisters fore and aft, and couldn't wear those boots again for another 2 weeks. Now the major difference between that situation and what can happen to horse is that, I have the choice of putting on the boots and the socks, and the choice or when and where I walk in them, a horse is slave to the whims of its owner/rider, and the horse can't speak the same language and say, hey this saddle was fine while we were trail riding on the flat but now we are tripping steers (or whatever) it is hurting like hell!

My opinion is that unless your horse's back is some very extreme shape then there will be trees out there that will fit him/her pretty good and they will also fit a bunch of other horses of the same shape.

look forward to hearing more from you Margaux as you are not the only one asking these questions and it gives us the oportunity to share this with everyone.

regards

dam

[Margaux]

Hi daviD,

Or is it Divad?

You make several points.

One is that you don't want your saddle too close to perfect, since that may not fit another horse when the original dies.

That doesn't seem logical.

Why would a saddle not perfect for one horse be better for another random horse, than a saddle which is perfect for the first horse?

Random is random.

You also seem to have a contradiction in there.

You say that you don't want a perfect fit, yet your boots let you down.

Had you gotten the correct boots made for YOUR foot in the first place, would you have gotten the blister from a couple miles of hiking. (BTW, don't you use kilometers down there? yuck yuck)

I think you have made my point.

You had a problem with your non-custom boots right? If you had a custom pair of boots made, wouldn't you want the be able to walk up and down (or do you walk down and up down there?) for a couple kilometers without getting a blister?

If you did have those custom boots made and did get blisters from a short hike, wouldn't you be, well, disappointed?

I know that I can go to Valley Vet and get some off the shelf saddle for my horse, or go to KMart and get a pair of off the shelf tennis boots for myself. But they are both compromises, and in my opinion, poor compromise, as your blisters can attest.

But if I get a custom saddle, or a custom pair of boots, I expect them to fit right.

I expect to ride or walk without problems.

Don't you?

More to the point:

I understand that you can find a saddle that fits "pretty good" as you say, and that I can find a pair of shoes that fit pretty well also.

My original question was: Why don't you want the saddle to fit right?

Your point seems to be that you don't want it to fit right because it's either too hard or too expensive. I get that.

But that is a financial compromise, not a decision which is in accord with my thinking, or desires.

Also, if you can find "pretty good" fits for saddles/trees, then why use Dennis Lane's system at all? Why not just have 4 or 5 (8 or 10?) different trees and call that good enough?

We are trying to to BETTER. Not just use off the shelf.

Is the whole idea behind getting a custom saddle to get it to look right? Or fit right?

I want both.

If I can't have both, I'll go to Valley Vet and pay $500. (US mate).

In short: I disagree. I want a custom saddle to fit like a custom saddle, and I want custom boot to fit MY foot, like custom boot should.

I care less about the looks, and more about the fit, but I want both.

I don't want it to be "pretty good" I want it to be "damned good".

That's why I'm interested in Dennis's system. There is the potential (not yet realized) for that system to make great trees for my foot. Oops, I mean my horse's back.

I'm still interested in hearing from the tree makers to hear how they account for the pad and fleece and leather when using Dennis Lane system. Nobody has addressed my basic question yet.

I think they don't. I think they think "good enough" and move on.

I think they don't use Lane's system correctly.

Anyone? I hope I'm wrong. Let me know!

BTW: I wish I were "down under" right now, it's zero degrees here in Colorado tonight. That's right, there is no temperature.

Best wishes from up-over,

Margaux

[SITTINGUPHIGH1]

Good point Dam. Things to concider when getting a saddle. Walking shoes or long distance running shoes. Trail running shoes or pavement running shoe. They make them all. Most people never get out of walking shoe. I had sandles made for my feet years ago. They made the out side shape of my foot and the arch to fit my feet. The rest was done by the special rubber they used that with in weeks shaped to my feet. The most comfortable feet ware I ever had. Funny thing I had broke my lower right leg 2 years ago. Now the sandle hurts my right foot to ware it. Things change over time.

That's a good question Margaux. If I was building a saddle tree to a horse type and didn't have a templete to follow. Would I have to compensate for the leather, sheep skin and pad. Lets say at least a inch or 2. I would think it would effect the wither pocket the most.

RANDD. I can see your point on the saddle tree. No pressure points on the saddle tree. I notice the top bottom part of the saddle tree bars are not cupped like the horses back. Just the wither pocket. The fact that the horse is moving a cupped tree bar bottom would make two pressure points on the outside edges. Trying to get a balance between fit and no pressure point is the job. Would you say the angles of the bar should stay in sink with the horses back?

Mort

[tonyc1]

After reading many articles over the last few months I've reached the conclusion that it's a miracle that so many horses have covered so many miles during the last 2 thousand years without all these theories and modern fitting systems, how did they do it?

Tony.

[D.A. Kabatoff]

Margaux,

you've asked quite a few interesting questions and perhaps the answers weren't presented in a way that makes sense to you. In turn, here's a couple questions for you... Which horse are you trying to fit... a two to three year old, a five to seven year old, a middle aged horse, an older horse? At what time of year are you trying to fit that horse... in the middle of winter when the horse isn't used much, in the spring time... in late summer after alot of excersise? These are the questions treemakers and saddlemakers have to answer everytime they make a tree and saddle. As for your custom shoes analogy, if you order custom shoes when your are 5, do they still fit when your are eight? Do they fit the same when your feet swell? If you go hiking with a pair of sneakers and carry a 30 lb pack, do they offer the support you need in different terrain with a load on your back?

The best answer to these questions is to fit the average. As Rod and Denise stated in their two rules, as long as nothing is creating pressure points and there is adequate bar surface to support the weight of the rider, this is the best you can hope for without having a whole bunch of saddles. And in fact, this isn't a problem because when you are talking about a well made tree and saddle, fitting the average will allow that saddle to be used not only on a variety of horses, but a single horse in a variety of conditions provided you have ordered the appropriately sized tree and the saddlemaker hasn't screwed up the fit. Incidentally, this is one more good reason to quit riding two and three year olds!

hope this helps some

Darc

[bruce johnson]

Margaux,

My take on this for what it is worth. Dennis and David have been to my place and seen my two horses. They don't card the same except for rock. Rod and Denise Nikkel have made two trees for my horses. I have ordered two more trees from them based on measurements from customer horses. I build saddles and I don't have the luxury of an individual saddle for each horse, and these customers don't either. What the cards do is let me tell Rod how much spread I need, whether the bars should be crowned or flatter, and what rock I need. I got specific for the wider horse, and it is within what I would consider tolerance for the other in my case. I can make up the difference with padding.

They aren't saying don't fit your horse. They aren't going to make a tree out of tolerance just to not be perfect. Make it for the horse you want. If the other horse is close, it still ought to work. If the other horse looks or measurements are way different, then you know that the same saddle isn't going to work on them both. That can be just as important to know for some people. There are all extremes of fitting (lack of a better word). Some rely on the treemakers and buy off the rack like you suggested from Valley Vet. Some treemakers will have more or less rock, flatter or crowned bars, and different spreads and angles. There are treemakers who get the rep within certain circles of their trees really fitting, and others will sore everything. Neither is correct. The bars that fit one of my horses (R12 rock with about a D11 withers - DocsStingerxPoco Tivio, head like one of Elton's swamp donkeys) won't fit what they might see in Wyoming. There is a treemaker that makes better production trees that fits my horse very well. His might not work on the flatter backed horses another guy sees.

But with the cards I can tell Rod or whoever that I have a horse with more rock. I don't have to say I need the rock that Sonny Felkins or Timberline has rather than the flatter Bowden bars for example, and hope he knows the competiton enough to guess what I mean. It simplifies the communication. If I didn't know what kind of bars that Rod or Dennis or whoever puts in as a "standard", I don't have to order one and say "Ooops, too much or not enough rock, or spread, or angle for this horse", and be out the cost of that tree. Once a guy gets comfortable with a tree maker and knows what they make, then it may not be as big a factor. Some of the old makers know who made what kind of bars and ordered from several different treemakers depending on what a customer might be riding. So and so's bars are flat and more rock, another guys are more crowned and less rock, etc.

The big bias against a lot of this, and it has a some basis is that you can make a perfect fitting tree for the horse standing at the post. As soon as he walks off, that geometry is constantly changing. Some guys will say that fit doesn't matter because of that. My thought is that is if it bites some at the post, it probably ain't going to get better when he moves. On the other end, you can fit one great, have the gaps or no gaps depending on your thoughts of that. Ride him a month and it all changes. Rest him two months and it is different. Put him in a stall and off the clover, etc. You are going to be close all the way through, but not perfect even for that horse very often. That is where the tolerances come in, and also where the tolerances of one saddle working on several similar horses comes in too. Now for the other side of this whole fitting thing for me personally. I think we pretty well fit the two wives and 75 or so horses I've had over the last 25 years with 4 saddles and the right pads. My first wife rode the same saddle whether she was running barrels, roping, or showing a bridle horse. She never sored one up that I could tell. I couldn't even tell you whose trees are in three of those saddles and can only guess at what they'd measure. That is real life, and lot of long riding folks have made that work too. My rambling thoughts, and dang sure not much of an answer.

.

[SITTINGUPHIGH1]

I agree with you Margaux.

[jonwatsabaugh]

I can't speak for all custom makers, but I know as a tree maker, I'm interested in a very specific group of horses. All horses can be custom fitted, but many have conformation defects that will never allow them to carry a saddle and rider and distribute the weight properly. Many custom makers hesitate to fit what I would call the "out of spec" back because then you have an "out of spec "saddle. What are the chances you will find another horse to fit your custom saddle if Old Nellie steps in a hole and breaks a leg two days after getting your new saddle? You have a fair size investment in a piece of equipment that has just obtained decoration statis. I sure wouldn't want this rig ending up sittin' atop a good horse that's got a real job! Chances are the original owner is going to want to recoop their money and will take greenbacks from the first real offer they get, regardless of where it will end up and what it will be cinched to.

I get pretty stiff-necked about the irresponsible breeding practices I see. I believe in all cases that conformation, mind, and athletic ability should be incorporated in all breeding programs. I'm primarily interested in good Quarter and Thouroughbred types with proper structure. I understand many use their horses purely for pleasure, and thats great, but buy and breed good stock. If you gotta feed'em, you might as well be feeding a good one!

Jon

[hidepounder]

Jon,

You'll like this.....

In an interview, after winning another major race, race horse trainer Bob Bafford was asked what he fed.

He replied "...We feed better horses!..."

Edited January 6, 2009 by hidepounder

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Margaux,

You may be sorry you asked… And since it took me a long time to write it, others have chimed in since.

Is this all "art", or is there an objective procedure for determining the proper tree?

First, we started with good patterns and good teaching from the guy we learned from. "We are where we are because we stand on the shoulders of giants." Next, over the years we have done what people have done for centuries - put different sizes of our trees on a bunch of different horses and see how they fit. And the test of how well our decisions were made is how do they work when made into saddles? So between good teaching, years of observation, and feedback from our customers, we have learned empirically that this combination of measurements works well on this type of horse. When someone would send us back drawings, we would do the same thing - figure out which measurements fit best on the drawings in front of us by comparing the templates to trees we had on hand or to templates we had taken of horses we had seen and decided on fit. When Dennis's system came out, we took out his cards and our trees to a bunch of horses and compared: this horse, these numbers off the cards, this size of tree – and made the correlations. So we now know what measurements on our trees fit with a given combination of numbers off the cards. This is as objective as we can do at the moment, and the "art" to it is learning to see how the bare tree sits and know how it will work in actual use. (That said, Dennis's system is extremely helpful in being able to compare specifically and easily between horses and thus it helps us in seeing the differences better.)

I would like it made for my horse, not one kinda like him

.

If we are given back drawings or Dennis Lane system numbers, we don't build a tree for a horse "kinda like that". But we do build a tree for that "kinda" horse. Your horse has a basic body type that thousands of others out there (unless you have a very bizarre horse) also have and that type is what we work to fit. Dennis's system has just made it a whole pile easier to really know what type your horse is.

We had a customer drop by today to ask some questions, so we pulled our horse out of the pasture and started throwing different sized trees up on him. Now Gus has what we think of as a good back. A good back to a tree maker is one that is easy to fit – not too extreme in any direction – flat or round, wide or narrow and with a decent wither. It was interesting to see the diversity of tree sizes that would work on him, one being ideal and the others being workable ie. they didn't dig in anywhere and wouldn't interfere, but they had less surface area in contact with him than the ideal tree did. So, if we were asked to build a tree to fit his body type, would we randomly choose any of the ones we tried on today? No. We would build the ideal size. If your horse's body type is more extreme (and those muscular barrel shaped horses that are totally round everywhere are "extreme" even if they are common) then your options when "buying off the rack" are a lot more limited. But as a custom maker, we do the same thing for that horse as we would for our Gus – fit that body shape as ideally as we can. (And mutter under our breath about horses not being bred to carry saddles these days.)

I'm still interested in hearing from the tree makers to hear how they account for the pad and fleece and leather

Rod's short answer: Do we make calculations to account for this? No. Does that mean it is not accounted for in the bar patterns we use? No. The patterns do take this into account.

Denise's verbose answer: We understand what you are saying about the padding affecting the fit but honestly, unless it is excessive, we don't feel it makes enough of a difference that we have to change what we do about it. If you had a flat counter top and added 1" to it, the same flat tray would still fit on top. If you had two nestled dessert bowls and added an inch pad between them, it would affect how they fit together. A horse's shape is closer to the flat counter top than the dessert bowl, and the amount of difference a 1" pad makes on the relatively shallow curves on a horse's back is not significant if the correct allowances are made for relief at the start. What I am saying is that the basic bar patterns we start with takes into account the fact there will be skirts and sheepskin and reasonable padding under the bar. If we had our druthers, the maximum pad thickness would be an inch. If you have a good fitting tree with adequate surface area already, we don't feel you need more than that. The people who have their 2 – 4 inches of padding are negating the fit of the tree. It would be like ordering custom boots but telling the guy you want to wear 8 pairs of socks inside them. He isn't going to need to be very exact in making the boot because all those socks obliterate the curves in the foot.

You are correct in that honestly, we don't often ask about padding when we build a tree (unless they are in a discipline that tends to overpad as a rule). Some saddle makers will tell us "this guy really pads up a lot" and then we sit and discuss how unnecessary it is and how it wrecks the fit of a good saddle. And we may make the fit a bit larger than we normally would for the type of horses the guy usually rides. But the people who use 4" of padding are not usually going to be going for Dennis's system either. And – opening a huge can of worms – the type of pad used is just as important as, if not more important than, the thickness in how it affects fit. And neither thickness nor type do we have any control over, and they WILL change with most of the riders out there. But if someone wants to be specific and give us that information, that's great. (If they want to listen to our suggestions, we like that even better. )

Building a saddle tree isn't like tapping a hole for a 3/32"" screw in metal where you can get an exact fit. A lot of the problems people have experienced come from using poorly designed saddles. They don't know how well a properly designed saddle works, so they look for that elusive "perfect fit" with all sorts of methods and (sorry to say) gimmicks. There is so much movement of the horse under the saddle, and so many other factors that affect how the saddle fits that we really feel there is a place called "good enough", and there isn't a place called "perfect". Not for more than a few seconds anyway. So we don't feel it is a cop out to say "good enough". That means GOOD – low PSI under all every part of the bar in contact with the horse – and ENOUGH - aiming for perfection in a constantly changing system is like grabbing at clouds. If cowboys can ride these things for hours at a time over all sorts of terrain on one horse, rope and doctor a bunch of sickies, including mature animals, and bring their horses home without sore backs, we're happy. And that is what our customers tell us their customers tell them.

PS. We enjoy your sense of humor.

[Margaux]

R&D:

Sorry I asked? Hell no, this is getting me close to where I'm trying to go! Thanks for your replies.

SittingUpHigh1:

(is there a sittinguphigh2?) You understand perfectly. I can see that from your comment about wither pocket. It seems to this inexperienced writer, that if the tree fits around the wither perfectly, when the pad/leather/fleece go on, it's going to pinch.

I hear several people say "...close enough....". (eg. Bruce Johnson and Rod/Denise)

So I'm getting that trees have larger tolerances than I had expected. (Perhaps I should say here that I have made 0.0 saddles, and 0.0 trees, and have ordered 0.0 trees. I have put my rear in a bunch, but let's not go there...)

In my engineering/physics experience, tolerances are something to tolerated, but minimize.

I think I hear everyone saying "...horses move, and that movement distorts the back a whole lot, so let's not go crazy making it too good, since that is a waste of time."

Did I get that right? If so, that is what I was looking for.

I've gotten a lot out of Rod and Denise's last reply.

First I get that it is far more art than science. (from the comments about "teaching", "observation", "feedback" "empirically" etc). While all that is good, it is not "better" which is what I always hunt for.

Perhaps that is all there is today, and if so, that is the answer I was looking for.

I get from Rod and Denise that you basically treat the back more as a flat surface than a bowl, which tells me that padding isn't really taken into account much, and if so, that is the answer that I was looking for too.

There are some contradictions in the reply which means there is a high probability that there is something I'm not getting:

"Does that mean it (spacing for padding/fleece) is not accounted for in the bar patterns we use? No"

and

"...we don't feel it makes enough of a difference that we have to change what we do about it"

So you do and you don't? What am I misunderstanding here?

I think you basically don't take it into account much. Is that right?

I also don't understand how "The patterns do take this into account." Could you educate me on that?

My summary so far (fix me if I have this wrong):

Horses move, so getting a "perfect" fit is a waste of time. The tree should be good, and experience is the guide, and final judge. There are other tools, like DL's system, and that will augment the experience, but isn't used in an objective way.

Tree makers don't take the padding/fleece into account much, since it doesn't matter much.

Here, for the record are some (questionable) suggestions which would easily take padding into account:

When placing a bare tree on the horses back, why not put some little 1" * 1" *1" sticking things (plastic? wood? felt?) onto the trial tree to see how the tree is going to fit in the end?

Or, hold the tree up 1" to see if there are 1" gaps everywhere normal to the surface? (too much "art" for my taste...)

Or, Dennis Lane's cards could come with inverse cards which are a "positive" (the same as the horse's back) but have 1" or 2" padding gap built in, so the tree maker could place those in a stand which holds them the appropriate distance apart, and the trial tree should fit just right onto that. The system could also be refined in several way to eliminate the cards (which would make it more universally accessible) and still be communicated through email. I have some ideas about that.

Or, have thermal set plastic softened, place that on the horses back to set up (there are plastics whose pliability varies drastically around 120 degrees F (BTW, there is still no temperature here in Colorado yet) ) and then put 1" sticky cubes in 20 spots on the blank, and fit the tree to that.

If people could point out why these ideas a NOT good, I think it would help me understand where my gaps in understand are.

That would be great.

Thanks for the info in the replies.

Best to all,

Margaux

[greg gomersall]

Margaux the reason you do not have to take the leather sheepskin and padding into the equation of wether or not the bare tree fits is that the angles do not change when you add them. If a 90 degree bar tree fits your horse properly as a bare tree then it will fit your horse properly covered. Yes the leather narrows it up a little all the way along the bottom side But it also raises it up the same amount at the same time so Your Angles Stay The Same. Over padding will ruin this fit but adequete padding will not. Hope this helps. Greg

[Margaux]

Greg,

I think that perhaps you don't understand the geometry of the situation.

Several others and I have pointed out why pads do affect the fit in previous posts.

Here is a picture which should help: (not great art work, I admit...)

I have not change the size or shape of the "tree" or the "horse" in the upper and lower drawings. I just added padding to the lower one.

Notice that in the lower picture, the saddle does not fit with the 1/2" pad I drew. Or the pad has to be crushed in some places, and not even touching in others. Either way, not a good fit any longer.

It would be worse with a 1" pad of course.

Your assertion is only correct, as R&D point out, on a flat table.

The next conversation, which is how much does it matter, I concluded that the answer is: "not enough to bother with". (okay, that's a run-on sentence.....)

But clearly padding does affect and change the fit.

Hope that helps.

Margaux

[jonwatsabaugh]

Margaux,

I see what you mean by your drawing, however your illustration representing the tree bar is incorrect. The front bar pad can never be concave. It is always slightly convex to flat, depending on the maker. Making the front bar pad concave would violate Rod & Denise's rule #1. Even with heavily muscled shoulders that are convex, you will never be successful in mating this profile with an opposing concave one. Greg is correct in his statement when considering a more standard whither type. This has been a good discusion!

Jon

[greg gomersall]

Marguax the edges of a tree bar are beveled off or rounded off a hair they are not square as your theory presumes and if your padding does not conform to the shape of your horses back you need to re-examine what type of padding you are using. Also in your picture after printing it out and doing some cutting and comparission its funny how the shape used in the top drawing does not match the one on the bottom, if you are not comparing apples to apples it is not a accurate comparisson.

We run into this same type of thing with people who seem to think that in order to get the fork and horn sitting closer to the horses back that the gullet needs to be widened to allow everything to sit lower when in reality what they need to do is have the fork made lower in the gullet to achieve this, with the primary gullet height measurement being the back at the handhole not the front lip. This whole thing can get quite complicated and for years we have been looking at it in the wrong way due to articles and information that has been passed down that was flawed to begin with. Greg

Greg,

I think that perhaps you don't understand the geometry of the situation.

Several others and I have pointed out why pads do affect the fit in previous posts.

Here is a picture which should help: (not great art work, I admit...)

I have not change the size or shape of the "tree" or the "horse" in the upper and lower drawings. I just added padding to the lower one.

Notice that in the lower picture, the saddle does not fit with the 1/2" pad I drew. Or the pad has to be crushed in some places, and not even touching in others. Either way, not a good fit any longer.

It would be worse with a 1" pad of course.

Your assertion is only correct, as R&D point out, on a flat table.

The next conversation, which is how much does it matter, I concluded that the answer is: "not enough to bother with". (okay, that's a run-on sentence.....)

But clearly padding does affect and change the fit.

Hope that helps.

Margaux

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Margaux,

Your picture explains perfectly why we don’t “mirror image” a fit. I am in no way disparaging your thinking or yourself, but honestly, it is the people who have the least experience with real trees and real horses that are most concerned with making a mirror image fit. Here is a thread about the plastic mold for the back. http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=519 (I like the “which side of the mold do you want me to fit?” quote.) Believe me, there are systems galore out there that have tried to do this. Peg boards and angle gauges and calculations, etc. etc. What a lot of people don’t understand is that these things HAVE been taken into account in the design of the tree. When you spend a lot of time alone in the shop carving wood or leather, you have lots of time to THINK. And we do! None of these questions or ideas are new, but they cause confusion for people. This forum gives us a place to try to explain, as best we can, why we do what we do the way we do. Then it is up to the reader.

Here is a picture of 90 degree angles over each other. It doesn’t matter how high you go, they still always fit on each other. They just get higher and higher (and more unstable) compared to the lowest one.

Here is a picture of the front of one of our trees.

You are not looking at in inwardly curving surface as your drawing shows. You are looking at an angle with curves in it. This tree will sit higher or lower on a horse depending on their width (and the volume of padding) but it won’t dig in at the bottom as your picture shows because of the relief built into the edges as part of the design of the bar. If the angle is wrong, THEN you can run into problems. (This is where Dennis’s system helps us know, not guess, the shape we are fitting.) But the padding doesn’t change the angle.

Here is a picture of the back of one of our trees. Same thing.

Here are two pictures (tried to get them as close as possible in the picture. Not perfect, but good enough? ) of the back bar pads of the tree pictured above lined up on a D8 (wide) pattern at the C position drawn from Dennis’s cards. This is the fit we would choose for this size horse. The first on is from the card itself.

This one is from a line drawn an inch (measured!) above the original drawing.

Now you may look at that and say “But it is barely contacting! The bottom edge sticks out into space and the top is nowhere near the horse.” etc. etc. But now add some weight to this saddle. Muscle is soft and compresses. Padding compresses too. That tree, when ridden, will contact with most of its surface area but the edges still will not dig in. If you had it shaped so the tree matched closer to the drawn shape, when you put weight on it, or asked the horse to turn, those edges would cause problems. This is the “art” of the tree design. How much relief to build in and where.

I hesitated to put this up those last two pictures because people can copy the picture, fiddle with it in a computer program and then say “Well, I’d change it by 3.72 degrees so it would fit much better than that.” But, as everyone who is on here with much experience is saying, it doesn’t matter that much. The horse will gain and lose weight. The rider may weigh 90 lbs or 250 lbs. The padding will change, etc. etc. etc. The bottom line is – if the design of the bars is such that 1.) it doesn’t dig in anywhere and 2.) it gets as much surface area on the horse as possible, IT WILL WORK. And by work, I mean distribute the rider’s weight over as much surface area as possible and not create pressure points. It really is that basic.

[steve mason]

Margaux;

You have got some incredible advice with this post, I have been making saddles for almost 20 years and I have learnt quite a bit here, when experts like those who have replied do so,I listen, then I can learn, you have questioned which is a good way to learn but you must be prepared to listen to the answers you get from the experts.

in regards to your drawing and the question of how padding affects trees, reread Greg's original post he explains it well, the angles stay the same the tree just is higher. I have done a quick sketch on a light board so the tree image and the horse image are exact between the two drawings, the proportions and angles are not accurate because this is just a quick sketch but it does get the point across.

when I get a potential customer who wants me to build them a saddle for their one horse I tell them I can build them a saddle that will fit that type of horse and will not be micro fitted to a single horse since there is and never will be a way to make a tree fit a horse perfect since the horses back will always change depending age and condition, if the potential customer still wants a tree made to fit their exact horse, they obviously do not respect my abilities as a saddle maker so I will not make them a saddle, I solve the problem before it is created and I send them packing.

Steve

[Margaux]

Ron and Denise,

Thanks so much for taking the time to educate me. That is exactly the information I was looking for. I truly appreciate you taking the time to do all that work for my education. I know it was a lot of work for you to do that, and I appreciate that a lot.

Your photos were so illuminating.

You had said earlier that you didn't want a mirror image, but I didn't get it. I do now. I now see what it looks like.

I suspect that is useful to others too.

It does all beg several new questions though, I'm full of them. Or full of something.....

1) If you are creating an angle as in photo 1, then why does Dennis Lane use curves? Why not just measure the angle and use that?

2) How do you decide where the angle of the tree will go tangent to the curve of the horse (see photo 4 for example), since there are an infinite number of choices there? (i.e. in photos 4 and 5, the tree touches just one spot on the curve of the horse. How do you decide where that point goes?)

Thanks again, I've enjoyed it all so far.

And I appreciate all those who have participated.

Best,

chilly Margaux.

PS johwatsabaugh (et. al.): are the cross sections of the bars convex at all locations? Or is it concave at some places? Thanks for your input too, it was useful.

PS Greg: You: "...its funny how the shape used in the top drawing does not match the one on the bottom..."

Me: I used the same plastic CD case for all of the arcs in the drawing, so I am sure they are all the same. The case is 124mm across, and so are all the arcs in the picture. (except for the pad arc of course, since that's my point in the post. It was measure 1/2" inward as measured from the normal at all points.)

It's cold here, but the case isn't shinking/expanding that much!

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Margaux,

First off, it's Rod, not Ron. Common error, but we don't want it getting more common.

If you are creating an angle as in photo 1, then why does Dennis Lane use curves?

Because Dennis’s system isn’t telling us how to build a tree. It is simply describing the shape of a horse, and horses are curved. WE decide how we want to fit that shape.

Why not just measure the angle and use that?

Which angle do we measure?

How do you decide where the angle of the tree will go tangent to the curve of the horse

Good instruction to start with and then experience. Lots of trees on lots of horses, on bare, with weight, with padding, moving around, looking, evaluating, feedback from customers riding the saddles.

I'm not saying we never fiddle with our patterns here and there. We do. But nothing drastic because when the basics are correct, they WORK. And we started out with correct basics.

[jonwatsabaugh]

Margaux,

Some makers choose to put a convex profile the entire length of the bar, a little or alot. Some are convex in the front pad and flat in the back pad. I've seen some old Hamley trees that were slightly concave on the back pad with quite a bit of convex on the front. In my experience with horses here in the midwest and on down through Texas, people tend to breed horses with a little more muscle, thus resulting in a cross section that is sometimes more convex than flat and also require a flatter angle to the bars in the front. Because of this, I make the front pads nearly flat in that crossection, with the rear pads perfectly flat, radiusing all edges. Properly blocked skirts will add extra radius to keep the bar edges away from the horse. Steve's drawing is a pretty good representation of a whither more pronounced that will accept a more convex profile in front. Every maker though, does this a little different based on their experience and philosophy in fit.

Jon

[daviD A Morris]

... yet your boots let you down.

Had you gotten the correct boots made for YOUR foot in the first place, would you have gotten the blister from a couple miles of hiking. (BTW, don't you use kilometers down there? yuck yuck)

...

Margaux

Ok, you got me on that one

And I prefer do my walking in miles, there's not as many of them 1 to 1-1/2 miles vs 1.6 to 2.4 km.

Thanks to everyone else for their input, I wrote my reply in haste and didn't explain very well.

dam

[CW56]

Hello everyone!

I've only just recently joined the forum but I'm amazed at all of the wonderful information on it! I've spent countless hours going through the saddle making and tree fitting postings and what I've always hoped to come across is a series of photos (instead of drawings or diagrams) showing different styles of bare trees sitting on different types of horses that would show the differnece between an acceptable fit and an unexcepable fit. Has anybody out there ever come across that sort of thing?

I'd like to build a saddle or two and even though I have no thoughts of trying to make a living from it I want to understand as much about trees and proper fit as I can.

I'm so thankful for this forum! And any help I can get!

CW