mbnaegle

I dug out a "junk" youth saddle from storage (not sentimental or anything. I think my parents found it in a junk store years ago.) And while its missing the stirrup straps, it turns out it has the same stirrup leather ring arrangement and a similar shape/style of tree. The leather is all dry rot, so I might rebuild it too at a later date for practice, but for now I gives some good design, tooling, and proportion guidance. There's no makers marks that I can see so far, but it does have a couple of numbers on the back of the swells (1261), and on one of the skirts (8054). Not sure if they are serial numbers, dates, or inventory numbers. I could see economy saddles like these being from a youth camp or a dude ranch or similar commercial endeavor where they might have been numbered.

Made a prototype draw knife holder tonight and am really pleased with how it turned out. Easy to drop a knife in and pull it out, keeps the blade angled back so its less likely to nick you, and also takes up less space. Its a simple lamination of 3/4" plywood bolted together and the slots in the front were cut with a drill and a band saw. Now to make a few more.

There should be a couple of tabs that stick up about 3/16" on top of the bottom roller bearings and these serve as reference marks for your blade position, separate from how high or low the roller itself sits. If you are splitting softer leathers, you would want the blade just touching the tabs, but if you are splitting harder denser leathers (shoe soles for example), you'd want maybe 1/16" or up to 1/8" gap between the tabs and the blade edge. This is because those denser leathers don't bend up over the blade as easily as they cut. If the blade is set too far forward, the material binds up as it cuts and puts extra pressure on the blade, while if it's too far back it might split easily but not accurately as the material can float and bend too much as it's cutting. You might have to do some trial and error, but it's not something you'll mess with often unless you are doing really precise work, and typically you just have to find a general area for the type of material you are seeing (softer or denser) and put the blade back at that same position whenever you take it off to sharpen. Most of the time I'll start with the blade shaving-sharp and adjusted all the way forward, and if the material dosn't want to go through or tires to bend the blade, I know to move it back a little and try again. Once you have the blade locked in place, then you can adjust the bottom roller using the studs and nuts under the bottom roller that go through the springs. Ideally, you want the roller as close to the blade as you can get it without the two touching. Some guys set it by looking at the visible gap between them and others will use paper or a feeler gauge to see that they are not hitting. This can be a little tricky since these rollers have the heavy saw-tooth like serrations, but it's better to error on having too much of a gap then to risk the two hitting. Too much of a gap just means it might "eat" really thin materials, which most don't use the 6" crank splitters for anyway. It's also worth noting that the bracket that the blade bolts too (the piece on yours that was broken and brazed) often has slots where it mounts to the frame. This is for balancing the blade to the top roller so that it splits evenly right to left, and can also help fine tune it to split 10 oz. when you set the dial to 10oz. I'll typically split one wide piece, or a small piece on either side at the same time, measure the result and adjust if as necessary, but afterwards you need to re-adjust the gap between the bottom roll and the blade. For many of these adjustments you'll have to go in circles checking and adjusting things over again, but each round it's closer to splitting easily and accurately. My experience with most splitters is that whatever dial or read-out the machine has to set thickness is a general reference, and you'll want to use a drop gauge or similar measuring tool to check your work and adjust the split thickness to compensate accordingly, because different materials compress differently than others as they feed through the machine. Adjusting the spring pressure on the bottom roller can also help with this. To be clear, I don't have any Landis literature to cite, but just experience working with different fixed blade and band knife splitters in general. I find the principals of blade position, feed roll position, and other adjustments all work the same. The parts, movements, and methods just vary between different models and manufacturers.

Not sure about a replacement blade holder, but In the past I've found on 6" crank splitters if the blade is flexing or seeing lots of downward force, it's usually a combination of being adjusted too far forward (towards the feed rollers) and/or not being sharp enough.

All good advise above. The lines in the cut are a give-away that the blade is not as sharp as it needs to be. Instead of the material passing through the blade easily, it meets resistance and will try to go above or bellow the blade as it cuts. Only thing I'd add is that if there's any wear in your feed roller, such that it's out of round or has play on the spindle it turns on, the machine is likely to "eat" the material, especially when doing thinner cuts.

Kind of a cool machine there. I've worked on some of the Seiko CH-8 machines and think they're a good machine in the same family as Adler 205 and Juki 441. I know that historically, Seiko came to be out of Singer's Japan division when the company started slitting up, but it's not often you see a machine like this that bears the old Singer name, while being the same as the newer Seiko's.

Thanks Randy. I'm looking through books to get an idea of patterns to follow and whatnot and It looks like the stirup strap rings and how that fits in with everything else would be the only thing unique about this saddle. Otherwise I'm planning to keep it fairly simple. If anything, I might lean a little towards an 1880's style with the squared off skirts, as the tall swells kind of remind me of one of those, but I don't plan on doing anything too extravagant.

The late 1940's till the early 1950's are my favorites, though anything older than 1960 is cool to me. I grew up around them as my Dad used a 1953 Ford F-100 truck as his daily vehicle until about 2005 or so. He was friends with the guy that bought it new in Arizona, restored it in the late 1980's in California, wore it out again, then around 2012 started restoring it again here in Texas. It's about 3/4's done and since he passed a couple years ago I've been finishing it. My brother had a 1959 Chevy Apache long bed he's restoring. My very first car was a 1954 Chevy 4 door 2100 I got for $300 around 2001. It's in pieces everywhere but someday will be fully restored. It's sea green with not many factory options. Around 2004 I got a 1953 Chevy 4 door 2100 too. Very rusty, but I got it running by the time I was a Senior in high school and have tried to keep it running since then as a daily driver, other than being down a few times for bigger issues. When I can I'm getting sections of bodywork done, chrome re-plated, and in general it's getting an ongoing restoration without a full teardown. It's black with lots of stainless and chrome, and has a lot of factory options like a Powerglide automatic, skirts, visor, radio, heater, spotlight, automatic headlight dimmer system, and some other stuff. Both of my cars I'm keeping stock with their old 235 straight 6 engines, although the 54' I'm souping up with a bunch of old 50's engine upgrades. My dad's old 53' Ford is also staying stock with some work truck upgrades it's picked up over the years. I like keeping them original, but also intend to regularly use them and not just keep them in a garage. That's how I justify putting money into them, as they're still plenty capable and otherwise I'd have a car payment for something newer.

Old thread, but it's been on my mind recently. I've got a couple of the traditional draw down stand that my dad bought from some old saddle makers years ago. They could use some repairs but are otherwise going strong. He had another he built using the base of a 1930's-1940's Ritter Electric Dental Chair. It swiveled and locked and had really finely controlled hydraulic rise and fall that could tear leather straps if you were not careful (not that you want to, but having the power is nice). As he transitioned into other fields of work, he changed out the saddle stand top for a flat bench top and used it for a general work station. At some point it stopped working and probably 5 or 10 years ago we called the curtain on it and scrapped it. I'm kicking myself now as I wish I hadn't given up on it, but am thinking about building another. I know similar custom made electric/hydraulic drawdown stands are out there but would love to see pictures. Currently looking for a good candidate chair base to build up. Our old one was really neat with lots of chrome and such, but it's seeming hard to find electric pump powered hydraulic chairs or chair bases from that period. Most are newer, or older with manual pedal pump hydraulics, which is what I might end up going with.

This is the drawers in the bench. Wide deep drawers with lots of cubbies and removable trays. Lots of space, but not quick to access. There's some big open shelves under the bench too. Mainly used for heavy stuff. Dad sewed up a lot of sheathes for some tools, like the one for his big slicker. He also kept a few Deep frame C-clamps at the bench as they could reach into a saddle seat to hold or set something in place. The bench is steel framed sheathed in plywood, and when he welded it up he made a long steel slot in the end and his bench splitter (an old "Krebs type" Randall) is mounted to a steel plank that fits into the slot. It's a fantastic configuration in use with all your scrap falling to the ground and ample room around the tool to work with it, and when you are done it slides out and hangs on the side of the bench. I've started mounting other small hand pull bench tools to planks to use the same routine, so they're all easy to use but don't take up any bench space.

Here's the back of the bench currently. The draw knives I have on their sides in leather loops, but don't like this. A lot of knives have makeshift wood and leather slots presently that I'm going to replace with sewn leather sheaths that I'll screw or tack to the sides of the cubbies. The round knife sheaths work well, as do the racks for the edgers, but they're crowded and need more sorting (theres even more in the drawers!). The pin cushions work well for loose needle and awl and drapery pin storage. The Landis 16 plate is there as my Dad had one when he was doing full time saddle and harness work and loved it, but sold it at some point (kept his two Landis 3's thankfully). We a different one come through our shop a few years ago that was worn out and half gutted of parts, so I saved the plate for him before it went to the scrap pile. Here's the wall organizers. Mainly long and cumbersome stuff, and the punches and clicker dies are beside his old clicker (its pad gets used for hand punching stuff too).

I'm a sucker for organization. For me it's more important than cleanliness, such that a little dust and scrap on the floor isn't a big deal, but tools and materials better be put away! My main tenants of fabrication, metal working with some occasional wood work, produce lots of flying chips, dust, and debris, and as such I don't like hanging tools up and leaving them exposed on the wall, opting instead to keep stuff in drawers, cabinets, trays, etc. Leatherwork typically doesn't make as much airborne mess, other than painting/dying and burnishing, which IMO is best neutralized with vacuum systems at the source or by doing it away from everything, so this opens up the possibilities of how I can store tools. I've been reorganizing my dad's leather bench, trying to put it back to being an active hand tool bench and not just a place to store his old tools. At one point it was meant to be a mobile work bench, which isn't as important now but is an aspect I like to consider with how stuff is hung on it. It has a built in back-board cubby as well as some large drawers with big and small tray organizers, and I've added some plywood panels on the walls to hang up other tools. In general my goal is to have stuff that is used often at easy access in the open, while stuff that is used less often is in the drawers. He had a LOT of tools and I'm not ready to part with any of it as it's more likely to split up between his grandkids if any of them develop an interest, so there's a lot of redundancy that I think will take time to establish which tools are my primary users, which are special, and which are the back-ups, which adds to the complexity. I'm interested in seeing how you store your tools. Hammers, edgers, knives, punches, etc. One thing I'd be interested in is how you store your draw knives? I have 5 or 6 and while I don't need them all, would like to keep a few on the bench to leave at different sizes. They're kind of an awkward shape as they don't fit in a hole or holster, but the pistol grip lends itself to something easy to grab. I'm thinking of making some kind of fork they can slide into. The blade is the other issue as it's easy to nick yourself on it when other tools are stored close to it. I could make micro-sheaths to cover them up, but that slows down the quick-draw. I'll post some pics of what I've done so far and other things my dad had done over the years.

Thanks, that makes sense. Closest I've found in the Al Stohlman book is some trees having slots cut in the bars for the sturip leathers to loop through. Here's tonight's progress. Most of the wood putty is done and did a little varnish to seal up some of the loose old cheese cloth. Once it's dry I'll do some sanding and touch up any holes that were missed, than more varnish and add more cheese cloth.

OK, it's stripped down to the bare tree. In addition to filling all the holes and fairing the joints before rewrapping and varnishing the cheese cloth covering, the bottom ears of one of the bars were broken off. It looks like it wasn't rot or stress, but they just had too many tacks over the years and had gotten weak. One was clearly an old break as it had several long tacks and an old sewing needle driven into it to hold it on (all pulled out). I'm gluing these back together, as well as a joint in the middle of the cantle that had a little movement. There isn't really an easy way to clamp them, so I tied them into place with cotton webbing. Here's the tree's measurements: Front bar width = 9" Rear bar width = 10" Front gullet width = 3" Rear gullet width = 2 1/2" Bar length from back of cantle = 1 1/2" Gullet height at swells = 5" Cantle width = 10 3/8" Cantle height = 2 1/2" Seat length = 11" Yep, it's an 11" seat. A little thing. I'm still looking through books to try and find more info on this tree, other than it has Slick Fork swells. The iron horn is nailed on and not screwed or bolted to the swell. That, it's small size, and the general light duty construction make me think this saddle was only meant to be used by small children on docile horses or pony's and was not built for any work or sport, or that it's only a display piece. The square rings nailed to the bars I'm not seeing in my books so far. What's their purpose? Are they for the sturip leathers, or part of the rigging? The metal tabs are recessed into the bars like it was designed for them.

It's been a little while since I've researched the CC rules here in Texas. I seem to remember rules changing a few years ago, but whatever the rules are I want to make a point to follow them. I've been around firearms my whole life, but for sure want to take a course before I start packing. In regards to an ankle holster, I should add I wear high top boots too (Red Wing Pecos or similar pull-on) with the jeans over the top. Just putting the pistol in my pocket might be a good simple option.