Chaed

Thank you for your advice, colttrainer! I'll write it down for next time!

Northmount and NoName, thanks so much for your comments, guys, you don't know how motivating they are! This weekend I did the fork cover after all. I decided for that cap&wrap horn style, so the fork had to go on first. You'd think that with a slick fork that'd be easy, but I had a heck of a time fitting it good and I'm still not 100% happy with it. But let the pictures speak for themselves... The rough cut. The horn was just a *little* too big to fit thru that hole so I had to make a small cut and start the whole dilemma of covering it up again. I tried about four different lacings on scrap leather and after realizing that they were all too difficult and more or less impossible (for me) to pull off on the fork cover I went back to the good old easy and basic method. After a little hammering (this is before) it looks presentable enough! This is just before the headache starts. It all went good apart from some hammer marks which I'll erase with my new friend oxalic acid later. That was until I had to do that gullet/fork connection with the scallops. It was horrible. It didn't fit, it made wrinkles and in my desperation I cut into places I probably shouldn't have. There are no immediate pictures of this progress. I was frustrated. This is it after drying. The front is not perfect (I would have prefered the fork to cover a bit more of the gullet) but it's symmetrical and I can happily live with it. This is the downside, quite literally. I somehow ended up with too little leather underneath although I followed the instructions from Harry Adams' saddlemaking book + some extra cm for safety. I would have liked this scalloped cover to be a bit bigger. The scallops themselves are smaller than usual because I lack the larger tool I'll rather invest into something else. The real messup is at the fork/groundseat/handhole triangle, but I'll show you that sometime later... like when it's covered by the seat!.... hopefully. Here is a last sneak peak of some future planning: Looking forward to your comments! Cheers from Austria, Anne

I tried fixing a piece of scrap leather with lemon juice, since that was what I had on hand. Worked wonders! I will deffo get oxalic acid for my saddle though! I am just completely relieved that this is something fixable. Phew. Time for some updates too! Last weekend's work: Risers. Glueing the strainer to its cover. Little hidden code on the backside! Strainer installed, and some horse armors in the background (my other big hobby). I then failed to take a picture of the shield phase. After long sittting/skiving sessions the result my butt is happy with. This weekend: Horn cover! Looking forward to your guys' opinions! Cheers, Anne

Thanks for clearing that up guys! One more thing learned in the big world of saddlery.

For a lack of better description I call them pointed horns. The image is of a Jeremiah Watt saddle, I hope he doesn't mind me using it. So, how do you do those slightly pointed horns? Is it a matter of simply cutting the leather that way, or does the horn has to be preshaped like that? Thanks a lot for all your answers! Anne

Northmount, thanks for your quick reply. Here's the curious thing about it: I cut and cased this piece of leather in a different room, and put it in a brand new plastic bag. The only thing from my workspace was my round knife. Could that be contaminated from sharpening/stropping? I will wash all my tools, just in case.

Hello leatherworkers! I'm pretty new to the hobby and I'm starting big. I've been in search for a new saddle for almost a year now, but it figures that nobody in my country has one that fits. I found LW and stalked the forums for a few months, now I finally decided to make my own. I owe a bunch of thanks to Rod&Denise Nikkel who made me a perfect wade tree. After I received that it still took a while to get together the rest of stuff, but I was lucky to combine it with a trip to the States and get three sides of 12-14oz. Hermann Oak, a shearling and Jeremiah Watt hardware. You don't want to know how the airport staff looked at me at customs when I arrived in Austria with one and a half cows and the bling-bling to decorate it... Now I finally found the time to start this huge project. It's going to be a slow process, because I can only work on it on the weekends, but my plan is to have it under the christmas tree. Today I did the gullet: Cut, skived and ready to apply I was a little shocked at how good this contact cement held when I first placed the gullet a little off the side. It was a pain to get it back off and replace it. Next week I'm going to fix my car with this. I borrowed the design after I saw the Saddle Slide Show video on Youtube by Keith Valley. Sadly, I only did a mediocre job at it because I think the leather was still too wet when I started stamping, but I'll get better in time. My biggest problem is that my ceramic beader blade drags in the leather (even after half an hour of stropping on each side!) and that once I stamp, the double line has those little bumps in it and isn't straight anymore. Any advice? Now, I have one more problem that I don't know how to solve: See those little blue/black dots on the leather? They weren't there when the leather was dry, but as soon as I wet it, they showed up. This happened to some of my scrap leather too and first I was thinking mold, but I'm keeping the HO sides in another part of the house just because of that so I was dismayed when they appeared again. It can't be dirty hands, because I've been wearing gloves just so I wouldn't get the leather dirty. Then I thought perhaps it's something in the water, so I cased a piece of scrap in distilled water. Same again. What am I doing wrong? Is there any way to get rid of those spots again or to prevent them altogether? Thanks a lot for your time, Anne

Thanks all for taking the time to review this thread - and of course Rod & Denise for building the tree! Here are some pictures of it on the horse. I'm as happy with it as you can be with a bare tree and if everything goes well I'll start turning it into a saddle in a few weeks; doubtlessly spamming the Leatherworker forum with hundreds of questions! And as Buck says, after taking a closer look at the factory saddles around I feel positive that even if I make a horrible job, it can't be worse than what some people ride on around here.

Thank you for the additional tips, Bruce! Especially the wedge for the stirrup leathers is a wonderful idea. I shall make them at once!

Hi guys. I'm slowly getting ready to build my first saddle so I just went through the process of making a drawdown stand. I made it a mix between Al Stohlman's simple design (there's a small sketch in the book when he details the extensive one) and the one in the Bruce Grant book "Making Cowboy Horsegear". Here is the simple version: And this is after "Pimp My Drawdown" (I was bored). I also made a simple sketch for other newbies wanting to build one and in need of some basic measurements - I'm pretty tall, so you might want to adjust the height. Let me know what you think! Cheers from Austria, Anne

Hi guys, I'm in the planning of making my first saddle and now I am searching for the best place to buy skirting leather. I'm looking for 10-12oz. or 11-13oz. since it should be a light trail saddle. I know that my best bet is probably HO or WC, but where exactly to buy them from? Right from the tanneries? Redistributors? Where can I get away with the best price/quality? Alternatively, perhaps even more preferable: To all european leatherworkers, where do you get your leathers from? (US wouldn't be a problem, since I'm travelling there in August and could take it home with me that way, but only this time. For the future, Europe would be preferable.) Thanks a bunch, Anne

Thank you for your fast reply, Bob! I am glad that my horse is apparently only outside the austrian norm and not the international one. As for saddle making books I have all three of the Stohlman books and am waiting for my copy of the Harry Adams manual to arrive. I have also talked with Dennis Lane and he will send a set of his system to me. Once I have that I think I can make a lot more precise statements regarding the conformation of my horse's back. After a lot of reading here on the forums I think that I will also go with a custom tree, as opposed to the semi custom ones from Bowden Inc. and Co. I have sent an email to Rod & Denise and hope that they will help me with the tree aspect of the saddle. As for the saddle itself, thank you a lot for the offer of advice - I will surely need it. Once I have everything and start the project I will make sure to post the steps of my progress here so everyone who knows a bit of saddlemaking can shout out to me whenever I make a colossal mistake. -Anne

Dear Johanna, please change my flag to Austria! Thanks!

Hey all Leatherworkers! I have been silently lurking in the shadows until now, but the time has come that I need your advice... The last saddler I went to told me: "Well, you don't have a typical western horse, so you've got to make compromises." And what he meant by that was that selling me a saddle that laid on the withers and pinched the shoulders was as good a deal as I'd get. If I padded it up enough it was going to be fine. He did not really manage to convince me... Sadly, we only have around three western saddlers in Austria. Two of them didn't have anything for a non-quarterhorse type and one of them is too expensive for me. She's a 17yrs old something or other WarmbloodxLipizzan mix, 15.8 hands (161cm). I do mostly trailriding with her and for almost a year now I do it bareback. Before that I had a Billy Cook High Country Rancher that wasn't a perfect fit but lasted me for a few years until it started bridging and hurting so I sold it. I was thinking about getting a custom tree built and putting the rest of the saddle together myself (long time big dream), but before that I want to ask you pros what you think of the shape of my horse. Is she really that hard to fit? I got used to riding bareback, but I don't want to do it for the rest of her life...