getting gullet width right

[figthnbullrider]

i am getting ready to make my first saddle and i have seen alot of saddles that are too narrow on the front part of the tree and pinch the horses sholders. i was wondering what the height to the base of the horn should be to avoid this. i need to give the tree maker mesurements and i want to get that one right

[Go2Tex]

It depends on the horse and the width of the gullet.

[figthnbullrider]

what is a avarage width for the gullet. and i have some thick horses ill be using it on mostly. any advice on where to start

[bruce johnson]

An average width for a gullet is probably 6-1/2" and crawling wider now. That may or may not be helpful. A few questions to kind of help us out here. Whose trees are you looking at? If they are stock trees from a production company, then you may need to try a couple different widths and bar angles to see which tree is closest to what you need. Yeah it's a hassle to try them and send them back, but not the hassle of putting a lot of work into something that doesn't fit. The trial and error fitting system unfortunately is still pretty prevalent. Becasue every maker's trees and bars are generally a little different, I don't think anyone can reliably go from a description of wide/narrow/meaty withers/peaked withers and tell anyone exactly what to get. Then it gets into what are you doing with the horses? How many different ones and different builds do you ride? What kind of padding. Rigging styles. Are these horses level or built downhill?

If you look in the section on Choosing the right saddle for the horse, there are a few threads that will help. There are two on Dennis Lane's system, and a pretty lively discussion on saddle fit in general. Gullet width is really only a small part of getting a closer fit than shooting in the dark. The bar patterns, how much they "open up" in the front, the shape on the front pads and where they are designed to sit by the tree maker, bar angles have changed over time, and now some guys are going to 95 degrees. How do you determine what you need? As the Nikkels say at the bottom of each of their posts, no two tree makers do it the same. Dennis's card system for measuring is about as simple and repeatable as it gets. How many treemakers will get on board with it and when is the factor here now.

I think Dennis posted that he thinks a lot of horses in the US are ridden on trees that are too wide. We have had it pounded into us that gullet clearance is a big factor in saddle fit - reduce leverage on the horn, all that. One way to get a lower gullet is to widen the spread. We get the two-finger clearance and think everything is OK. Problem is the saddle is tipping forward, the full double rigging is pulling it down, and the front points are digging into the shoulders. The lower it gets, the worse it gets in this case.

All this said, what are you riding now? Does it fit you horses well enough? Who made that tree if it does? What does it measure? That is at least a baseline to start from.

[figthnbullrider]

currently i ride in my wifes barrel saddles. my uncle has one too that i use when i can steal it away. it will really be a general use saddle. hers are made by billy cook. im gonna get out there and measure hers. thanks for the help

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Getting the right saddle fit is a lot like buying women’s clothing – no number, size or description means anything specific, and different maker's trees all fit differently. You have to try them on to know how they fit. There is nothing like comparing how different trees sit on different horses to start developing an eye as to what fits best. So if you have the option of getting a few of different trees to check out, do it. If not, when you call to order the tree, talk to the tree maker, describe as best you can the horses you are trying to fit and go with their recommendation as a starting point because they know the numbers that go with the sizes and shapes that they make. But you can’t take any number – gullet width, hand hole width, gullet height, etc. - transfer it between makers and expect the same fit. There are just too many variables involved, and they all, well… vary.

With the bad news out of the way, your specific question was about a saddle “pinching a horse’s shouldersâ€Â. I’m assuming at this point that you are talking about the shoulder blades themselves and not the area behind the shoulder, which is another discussion. This can happen for a number of reasons, and you need to understand what may cause it so that you know how to prevent it.

Some horses are built with shoulders that are flat. Some horses are built with shoulders that bulge out. It is these bulgy ones that tend to “be pinched†by a saddle that would be fine on a flatter shouldered horse because there is such a difference of width in such a short distance. Some of these horses need to have the front bar tip cut back a bit to avoid the bulk of the shoulders. Proper relief or "flare" is also vital on these horses. Poor horse conformation causes all sorts of problems getting saddles to fit well.

A common problem is that the saddle is being placed too far forward on the horse compared to where it was made to fit, and then held there by a breast collar. Trees are commonly made to fit behind the shoulder blades, flaring out at the front to allow full shoulder rotation. If the front is flared out, it means that the tree narrows as it goes back. If you take that tree and stick it too far forward, then a narrower point of the tree is on top of the shoulder blades. If you then force it to stay there with the breast collar, you will be putting excess pressure on that horse’s shoulders even if the tree fits perfectly if it were allowed to go where it is supposed to sit. Go to any roping and you will likely see a high percentage of horses saddled like this. Any rider can benefit by looking at a bare tree on a horse and seeing where it is supposed to fit (where the shape of the bottom of the bar matches the shape of the horse’s back). It would surprise a lot of people.

Saddle construction can cause shoulder pinching too. If the skirts aren’t blocked well, or at all, they will go straight forward rather than following the curve of the front bar tip. This can negate the relief built into the bars of the tree and rub and pinch a horse even if the bare tree fitted well.

Finally, to the tree. Assuming you have the correct width and angle to the bars to fit the rest of the horse, you can still have problems with the shoulder blades if there is not enough relief or “flare†built into the front bar tips. If the front bar tips are straight and blunted, the shoulder blades will run into this “wall†as they rotate back. If the front bar tips are rounded well, they won’t interfere with the shoulder blades. There is no measurement for this. You need to see how each tree maker shapes their front bar tips to know what you are getting. (Thanks to Blake for clarifying some of the following information: The shoulder blade rotates so the back of its top edge is farthest back when the leg is fully extended forward. This is a non-weight bearing position, which allows the shoulder blade to slide under the front bar tip a slight amount, if it has enough relief, which wouldn’t be possible if it were bearing weight at that stage of the stride. This is why some situations that look like they should cause problems really don’t. When weight bearing, the shoulder blade is more upright, so that back corner is farther forward. It has to be beyond the range of any contact with the tree at this stage or its movement will be impeded and other problems will be caused.)

If my assumption is wrong and you are asking about getting the correct width and angle between the bars to fit the horse, that can be another dissertation – later…

Edited December 7, 2007 by Rod and Denise Nikkel

[Alan Bell]

Funny to hear folks are ordering 95 degree bars now. I though all my horses were 93 degree horses until I put a weight tape to them! I had one mare that is barely 14.2 hh that I couldn't even get the tape around! Easily packing around an extra 300 lbs or so mostly in fat pockets on her withers. Underneath all that there is the 90 degree horse that I satrted out with. I've corralled all my pasture horses and have started them on Whinny Craig! LOL! Look for the commercial on RFD (Retards, Fools, and Dummies)

Vaya Con Dios, Alan Bell

Oh people, Ride On, Midnight Ravers, Ride On

Bob Marley - Midnight Ravers