Janice

Here is a pic of my plough gauge.

Hey Joanna, its Jan from yarrow. My old mare in her later years was lookin alot like your guy. I ended up borrowing Sara's treeless endurance , and went up the mountain. The results were so impressive, I ordered one some time real soon after that. Mares shoulders were completly free, she wasnt sore, I was compfy, it all just worked. I am not a treeless fanatic, my reg saddles for my three horses now are: crates circle y and f.eamor. Treeless is an alternate lifesyle, so to speak, but if you want to try mine, just come out for a ride here. I do have an arena, or Rons indoor, and of course the trails. Just let me know. This one was made buy Dana, of nickers saddlery.

A point for the newbies as well, as I have found this to clear up alot of confused saddle shoppers. There is no set standard for saddle trees, no industrial gauge, so to speak, when refering to the bars. By this I mean, if a saddle in a store says it is "full quarter horse bars", if can be different from one brand to the next. Example, a "billy cook" full qtr hrs bars saddle can be different from a "circle Y" full qtr hrs bars saddle, UNLESS they both used the exact same tree, from the same manufacturer. So when you say full, semi, arab, mule etc, it is a generalized label, which can vary with the brand or maker of tree, not an exact measure. So for those buying "off the rack", you may fit a semi in one brand, and need a full in another. Trick is to keep an open mind, and not tie yourself to a label. Hopefully that was clearer than mud?

Ahhh, but back then horse fittings were not so mundane, but rather a lifeline to survival, as was the horse, for many people. Livings were made, familys were fed, with the horse. (Just a thought that passed between my ears Suze)

I have heard of people using baby powder to take the squeak out of new saddles. I have no personal experiance with this though,,,

I would really like to see a picture of a tri bolt if anyone has one.

I know I am kinda jumping in late here,,, I would get my hands on an old, full length if possible, leather coat from a second hand store. If it has a hole, or is an ugly color/style, you should be able to buy it very cheap. Make yourself an apron out of it. and you get to recycle

Hi Bruce, nice collection of splitters you have there. So my Krebs is a style then, good to know. There is no makers mark on it anywhere, so I was unsure. I dont use it much, got used to the landis crank handle first. (lazy I guess!) Thanks, Jan

Thanks for the help! (nuther post) Here is mine.

Ok, thanks for that link! Here come the splitters, and I will put the plow gauge knife in the other post.

Ok, this is a test picture

Sorry, those look awful big. I wont post any more till someone teaches me how to do it like everyone elses.

Thank you for the link. I now know my landis is a number 30! I think the other one is a "krebs". So is that the style, or the brand name of it? How much should I be insuring these for, if you dont mind me asking? I would post pics, does photobucket work for everyone here, or is there a better way? I will try photobucket in this post, for my old american boot stitcher. This would be before we cleaned off the few lbs of wax stuck to the front of it! Hope this works

If someone can tell me how to put a pic on here, I will show you mine. I think it is B-eautiful!

I would be really proud to have my horse wearing that. Nice work.

Well, this looks like a friendly, informative place! My name is Jan, and I have way to many tools! Ok, let me start again. I am a middle aged, horse loving married lady, who works full time at a day job, and stumbled into a leather business a few years back. My family consists of a hubby, 1 dog, 2 cats, and 3 horses, living at home, and 2 step sons, grown up, living on thier own. We live in the south western corner of Canada, in the fraser valley, an hour or so from Vancouver. Interests are mainly horses, riding, camping with horses in the mountains, playing with cattle on horses, and of course leatherwork. I love fixing western saddles. So, about 4 years ago, I was at our local tack fixin place. It was a shop in a basement of a house, run by an 84 yr old fellow. He mentioned to me that he was fixin to sell everything, and retire from it all. I inquired on the price, had NO clue if it was a deal or not, and went home. I just couldnt get it out of my mind. Now, I have the most supportive hubby in the world, and he encouraged me to go for it. (He had no clue on the value of it either) So we bought all of it, and spent a full weekend moving everything home, 20 min away. We made a few trips with a friends horse trailer, and our truck. We have a large shop here, 35 X 50, and it takes up half of that. I have been using the things I know how too, I was shown a few things, strap cutting, rivit setting, and basic sewing machine operation, but there are some machines I have no clue about. I will post pictures later on with specific questions in the proper threads, about all of my "unknowns" Untill I get there, here is a partial list of the machines I (mostly) know about. (ant)-stands for antique, in this thread. Juki pro 2000 sewing machine, 2 (ant) creasers, on floor stands 3 kick presses, bench mounted -eyelet setter (ant) -embosser (very ant) wieghs about 100 lbs -snap setter????? The above machines have all kinds of attachments for them, and I will be asking for help on these. 2 splitters -osbourne approx 8 inch -landis 6 inch (ant) 1 landis cutter (ant) 1 table top machine that you plug in , it heats up, and you can type-set letters in it. It will burn them in, or use it cold with gold/silver leaf. a box of about 30 hand tools, all woden handled, stuff like edgers, groovers, creasers, various knives etc. a couple of drawers of drive punches. Strap end, bag, round, concho, etc etc. Sized tiny to huge, mostly osbourne. a punch table/bench for them 1 lg & 1 small pinking cutter (ant) (lg would do the edge of harness "saddle" felt, sm would do edge of suede on a western saddle seat.) A couple of cast iron hand rivet setters, could be mounted on the bench, about 8 inches tall. 1 beautiful brass and steel plow knife I cut straps with.(push type) Another starp cutter, pull type, never used it (ant) 1 cast iron hide holder, mounted on the end of the cutting table, will hold the hide while I cut it. about 100 stamping tools. tens of thousands of spots too much hardware to get into, as well as cabinets, drawers and bins to hold it all. Since then, I got offered to buy another sewing machine recently, turned out to be 2 of them. 1-sewing machine & table WSM-tdu-n62 1-american boot stitcher Both of these were from our local shoemaker, many pairs of loggers boots were fixed on that stitcher. I have plugged them in, they do run, havent used them. Hubby shaved off about 2 lbs of wax off the stitcher, while cleaning it up. Please ask for pics of any of this, if you want to see it, and I will work on that. Sure am glad Hubby found me this forum!