medic0011

Thanks Wyoming Slick and all others that have posted. I went and looked at the old ad that had a similar saddle and yes, mine is very close to what that one looked like. I still haven't been able to take good pictures yet, but I will try to upload the one's from my phone. They're not very good and show it before I cleaned it up very much. For some reason, it will only allow me to upload one photo........ Thanks,

Hello all, first post here and I hope someone may be able to help me. I have an old saddle that has 11 swastikas or "whirling logs" stamped or carved into the leather in various places. It has a high back and is very unusual. It has been in my family all of my life and nobody can really remember where it came from. It has been hanging in a barn for as long as me or my Mom can remember. One of my uncles seems to think that my Grandpa bought it with a horse in the early 60's. My Dad and I had plans to restore it numerous different times, but he fell into poor health and passed away about two years ago. I finally remembered it a couple of weeks ago and drug it out of the barn. After cleaning all of the dirt and bird crap off of it, I have started to slowly work some oil into it. My wife has spent hours on google and other sites trying to find other examples or pictures of similar items. She has kind of hit a brick wall and we really can't find anymore information or picures of others. This has led me to kind of stop my amateur "restoration" of this saddle and turn to the experts. We don't know a whole heck of a lot about fixing up saddles, only to keep the ones we have in rideable condition. I did contact a fella that does saddle restoration online and he quoted me a price of $500 to do the work for us. He cautioned me that it might be more or less depending on when he gets it. The leather feels more like wood than leather and some areas of the skirt and jockey are curled up pretty bad. I'm sure that $500 is more than worth it for the work, but I don't think we've ever paid that much for a good useable pre-owned saddle. But that leads me to thinking if what we have here is truly unique or valuable, it might be money well spent so I don't mess it up. That's why I'm here asking you experts and folks that know more than we do. I would probably never sell it, but if it is something special, I'll probably go ahead and have a professional do the work. I do apologize in advance. I haven't been able to find any makers marks or post pictures of it yet. I do have some pictures on my phone, but they aren't of very good quality. If this is something that interests you all, I will do my best to take some good pictures and post them. Sorry that this is long winded, but I thank you all in advance for the help.