Mike Craw

To follow on to Luke's comment, Carlos and I got a couple of small cans of Barge at Tandy's, and after using it for a while, we thought it was defective. It was a sort of clear yellowish color, and I didn't think it held worth a We stopped into Tandy in Jacksonville and asked Annette what the deal was with Barge. She didn't know what we were talking about, so we got a new small can off the shelf and opened it. Same thin, almost clear yellow color. Just for giggles we got one of the gallon cans down and looked in there. Now THAT was the Barge we knew and loved. I don't know if OSHA or Greenpeace or somebody made them change the formula or what, but this new stuff isn't worth the powder to blow it straight up!! Oh, and we bought a couple of gallon cans of the good stuff. Mike

I have always felt that plain was MUCH harder to do well. A lot of intricate carving can take the eye away from a lot of other shortcomings. You did a great job! Mike

They are commonly called "bouncers" and they are made from glass or porcelain door knobs. or turned from very hard, tight-grained wood like lignum vaite. They are used most often once a flat piece of skirting leather has been cased over night and is being forced down into position to form a seat. When it is pulled down on the sides over the ground seat behind the hand-hold area, it naturally does not want to bend and stretch the opposite way over the back of the cantle and down into the dish of the cantle. The bouncer is used to form the leather down into the dish. There is usually a bubble of leather right over the dish on the cantle, and if you work it properly with the bouncer, the leather can actually be forced to come together in the middle and the bubble disapears. The bouncer has to be absolutely smooth, because the cased leather will accept and hold (forever) any marks placed on it by a scarred-up bouncer. That said, it seems like anybody who is talented enough to make a saddle ought to be talented enough to attach a door knob to a stick, so the price does seem a tad high...

You don't need to be worried about being ID'd from THAT picture!! Mike

For me, this is a perfect example of why we should document our work and work spaces. Right now it's just the "stuff" we see and do every day, but for future generations it will be priceless material. Steve, it must be great to have those wonderful photos of your great-Grandfather's saddles and shop. Mike

I believe the answers to your questions are: Yes, and yes! Mike

Yeah, I'm always doing stuff like that. You should have seen me trying to find the one with the guy carving the cats. I couldn't imagine how he could hold them still! Mike

YES! But that was "pre-crash" so I don't know if it's ever coming back...unless Bruce bookmarked it Mike

OK, I know I was born 100 years too late, but is anybody else going to admit to being as stupid as I am??? I clicked on that attachment expecting to be impressed by the skill rdb exhibited in making those "leather bookmarks". Alright, I'll shut up and go back in my cave... Mike

Hey, how about a "Before and After" on restoration jobs? If any of us really brings one back from the dead, we can post them, assuming we remembered to take a "Before"... Mike

Wow, we've gotten saddles in that were made in 1996 that only looked like they were made in '36. That thing is beautiful! Mike

HI Marcel! My opinion is that it doesn't matter to the final product. You make as many cuts as you need to for the final result to come out the way you want. Rather than strain to keep the knife blade in the leather when you turn your work and mess up the cut, pick up the knife, turn the work and start again. I doubt there are too many of us who can look at the final stamped work and tell (or care) if the cuts were one long one or several small ones. Mike

There is a thread in "Show Off!!" under My First Saddle where I posted this photo, but this is the first saddle I ever made. It was my daughter's wedding present in May of 2006.

My first saddle was my daughter's wedding present. I started helping Carlos out in his saddle shop in December of '05, right after I retired, doing some tooling on Christmas presents. After we worked through the backlog, I started doing repair work on saddles. I had already read the Stolhman series and the articles written by Pete Gorrell in the Leather Crafters Journal, but doing repair work was a great education in itself about what worked and what doesn't. In February of '06, Carlos asked me if I didn't want to build that saddle I was talking about for Patty. I said yes, but the wedding is May 20th, is that going to be enough time? He said "plenty of time"... not! We went to saddle week in Sheridan in May and got back one week before the wedding. The skirts weren't sewed, the seat wasn't tooled, the stirrups weren't covered..."plenty of time." Well, I barely made it, but she loved it.

If you've been working a long time (days) on a really large (saddle part) hunk of leather stamping, you can use oxalic acid solution to take black mold marks off leather. Make sure you are totally don with your tooling, 'cause it makes the leather really hard. Mike

HI Ramjet, Welcome to the site! For a beginner, the "How to Make Holsters" by Al Stolhman is absolutely the best. You can get it from Tandy Leather for about $10 and it answers questions about types of holsters, measuring and drawing you holster's design, sewing versus lacing the seams, and probably some stuff you haven't even thought of. I bought this book in 1981 in Cherry Hill, NJ and every holster I carried on duty since that day was made using what I learned from that book. Good luck and have fun. Mike

WaG35, If I understand your question correctly, you are molding the top of the holster, it is glued to the flat back of the holster, and then you want to trim the top to the dimensions of the back, correct? I would put a cutting board at the edge of my bench and just lay the edge of the holster onto the cutting board until the molded part of the holster contacts the edge of the cutting board, then you could use a round knife for the outside curves and a straight knife for the inside curves. I'd guess the Kydex would already be trimed to the final profile, so you could use that as a guide for your knife. That's the way I trim odd pieces. Mike

Leather Crafters and Saddlers Journal (Sept.-Oct. '99) did an article by Harry Adams, Jr. on the "original" Sam Stagg style rigging. In the Sept.-Oct 2007 issue, Tad Mizwa showed how to do one using one solid piece of leather with a slit down the middle that was pretty cool. Mike

Luke, What great looking mocs! Does the elk form to your foot, or is there some tie mechanism at the top to tighten them? I know you're supposed to use re-enactment gear, but those look too nice to wear outside the house! Mike

Great, thanks for the tip! Mike

Hey Randy! Regarding Pete's tip about casing, I got the part about rubbing in the Lexol, but how do you do the baby shampoo? Is it diluted or full strenght? Do you put it on a peice of wool, or just on your hands? Does it matter whether you do this all before you trace your design, say on a belt? Mike

oldgringo, OK, I guess the "crash" was in '08. I had such bad withdrawls without the site, I forgot what year it was :comppunch: Stuff should be in the mail today. Mike

Hey oldgringo! Before the big crash of '07, I had written to you that the June '07 issue of Shop Talk! had an article about taps which included design scale drawing by a couple of makers with several different designs. If you would like a Xerox of the article, send me a PM with your address, and I'll send it to you. Mike

I live on St. Simons Island, Georgia. I retired as a Senior Special Agent, U.S. Customs Service and was a Law Enforcement Instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Brunswick, Georgia. A lady I worked with at FLETC had horses at her home in Kingsland, GA. When I took my younger (horse crazy) daughter over to meet her in 2005, I met her husband, Carlos, who is retired and running a small saddle shop out of their home. He calls it "Rancho No Tengo". I had been doing leather work since 1981, making my own holsters and gunbelts, and Carlos needed a little help finishing some Christmas presents, so I started helping a couple of days a week. After Christmas I started helping with saddle repairs. The first custom saddle I built was my daughter's wedding present in May 2006. If the computer gods are willing, there is a photo of the shop attached. Mike

Several of the saddles I've repaired have had that "thumb" style of strap, and from the wear on them, I'd say that it is absolutely for guiding the stirrup leathers. I've never repaired one of those straps that broke from strain between the front and back dees. They have always worn through from stirrup leather rub. Mike