PcCowboy

Already have one. A customer of mine.

I have the repair manual that came with mine. I could copy what pages you need and email them to you.

How old is barry King. The company was in Rodchester NY. It's stamped on the side of the tool.

Of course I didn't show everything. I still have saddle makers asking me how I get the horn caps completely round.

I have kept every email that he has sent me with our conversations, even the one where he told me that the box must have got lost in the mail and not to worry about it and where he told me to pack everything up and send it back to him.

I have a stamping tool that I would like to get duplicated and another made half size. The company that made this tool went out of business 100 years ago. Needles to say I have never seen another like it. I have been offered $100 for it. Know of anyone who can do this? I have attached a picture of what this tool does.

I have a tool I call a wave stamp. It is what I use to make a wave border. The company that made this tool went out of business 100 years ago. I have never seen anyone with a tool like this. I'm the only one in this area that does this tooling and it is sort of my trade mark.

I use it for trimming the boot sole in front of the boot heel. The lip protect the side of the boot from being cut.

That was my first impression. Buck stitching hole makers or markers

Saw on "Storage Wars" where they found a rolling tool chest with 3-4 draws full of leather and stamping tools. Some "famous" saddlemaker (I never heard of him) told them they were worth around $60

I would say Tandy, I have a couple of their brass handles.

This a saddle I made last month.

I had a saddle like that in my shop back in 1999. The border was swastikas. A antique dealer came in and saw it and jumped on it. He gave me the name of the maker that used the swastika on his saddles but can't remember it. He said that it was a Native American good luck symbol. Gave me $600 for it and I paid some cowboy $50 for it. Oh and I have used this new stuff call "Leather Therapy" on leather that was hard and breaks when you tried to bend it. It turned that leather back soft again.

A guy called me looking for a saddlemaker to put together a couple of saddles for him that he had started on and didn't know how to finish. Since I needed the money and had nothing to do I agreed. We agreed upon $1000 since it was only labor and he would be sending me everything I needed. It was a lot more work than I expected. First of all appearently he didn't know the first thing about saddlemaking and I had to tear it all down and start from scratch. ( I won't go into what a pain he was calling me 3-4 times a day telling me what he wanted and how to do it over and over again) I finished the first saddle and knew I had a problem when he sent me a check for $1000 + the shipping cause he didn't pay the sales tax. He claimed he didn't have to pay the sales tax cause he lives in New Mexico. That's all well and good, but he had me ship the saddle to a Texas Address which under law means I have to collect the sales tax. Then he tells me by email that because of the high cost of shipping back and forth that he will only be paying me $600 for the 2nd saddle. No way, and I told him so. I packed up everything and sent it back to him. Today I recieved an email from him saying this: "The cost of shipping you the saddle and you just UPS it back with over $100.00 in parts missing (He claims he shipped me a box of hardware that I never recieved) now I have to pay shipping again to another saddle builder and time delay on the build is costing me money. (Why is this costing him money, I thought these saddles was for his personal use) Balance due is money due on the cost of just shipping a saddle back unfinished. The agreement was to build the saddle not cost me $3000.00 in lost rev I figure $999.00 is a reasonable amount to pay. I'm also charging 8% per month on unpaid accounts." WHAT!!! He want me to pay him for not building him a saddle, come on now. I pretty sure he doesn't have a leg to stand on, am I'm right?

Howdy all. I'm new to this forum. I'm Dallas Tieking, owner of Lewis Saddle Shop of Hereford Texas. Was taught saddle making by Wilford Lewis and have been making them since 92 when I took over the shop. This being a saddle construction part of the forum I thought some might be interested in seeing a webpage I setup on how I make saddles by photos. Here is the address: http://lewissaddleshop.com/Birth/how_to.htm

We have fixed many a fiberglass covered tree that broke at the rigging. You sand away the glass and glue the broken piece back in place and recover with fiverglass. We go with extra glass because appearently the maker didn't use enough layers. We use 3 layers (30,000 PSI per layer) in our trees. Now a rawhide cover tree is a little harder. We cut away the rawhide from the break. Gluing the broken pieces back. The we tapper the rawhide edges and nail them in place. And we recover the broken place with fiberglass going pass the rawhide edges about half an inch.

Now it may be just me but I have never heard of stretching stirrup leathers. I cut my leathers right out of the back where there is no stretch in the leather. Now I wet the leathers and the back side of the tooled fenders, assemble them and turn them and let them dry. Should have seen the first time I took one of Wilford's tooled fenders and dipped the whole thing in water, I thought he was going to come unglued. He said you never take leather that has been tooled and wet it on both sides. It ruins the tooling.

Take a close look at the tree. I have seen many saddles made in Mexico that has, as I call them, fake rawhide cover trees. What I mean is, that the rawhide is only on the edges of the bars, and the rest of the tree is bare wood. I wouldn't rope anything out of that kind of tree.

Here is a saddle we made from the 1800s for Brad Johnson's movie and tv show "The life and Times of Ned Blessing" And one made by Wilford Lewis for Merle Haggard.

Any saddlmakers here making a saddle for Ronny Chumley down El Paso way?