skip

How about a few pictures so we can see your fine work and see what the shoes look like. I agree with the neat lac, however I believe a nice leather dressing with some beeswax would probably help soften the leather a little, I use Skidmores saddle dressing, Aussie dressing works well also. good luck.

that is a very nice sheath I wish you had a picture of the knife next to it so we can see why you wated years to receive one from that paticular maker. very nice work, fancy

I will often use athletic tape on my fingers while stiching a cantle binding, the one problem with it is that it makes the thread look dirty rather than clean and white like when I first started. good luck and when you do it enough times the callouses will take the place of the tape. just keep moving forward.

Very nice demo I too haven't seen dying like that since the seventies. thank you for reminding me of my past and the fun I had when I was just a wee ladd.

how about a pictorial tutorial of the next hide you clean and wash so we can visualize your process, the process sounds simple enough but it always helps to see pictures of the process. thanks for the information. When you pick up your hide how do you konw that it just came off the cow? I have one processing that I know of that is an hour and a half away. Do you get your hides from a processing plant or do you go direct to the butchers, or Cattlemen? thanks again for the information Skip

in answer to your question about gremlins, it is yes and Grumpy guy is very correct with the things he mentioned in detail. if the saddle is in good shape I would leave it alone and find a saddle maker to apprentice with or that would let you pick his, or her brain for the help you will need. if you will check previous posts on this site concerning saddle making you will find several books and video's/ cd's tha would give yoou some really good back ground on building your own saddle and that would put you on the right track. take care and good luck. keep us posted on your trek. Skip

You are asking a very difficult question. you haven't mentioned how much experience you have as a leather worker. also is the saddle in sad condition or are you just wanting to experiment? one of the best ways to learn how to build saddles is doing repair work. another question is who was the saddle made by. I ask this question because there are a lot of really bad saddles out there and if it is a poorley constructed saddle you really do not want to learn the bad, poor ways to construct a saddle. I would recomend you check out some saddle making books and read and study different construction techniques and look up a local saddle maker and ask them if they would guide you if you get into trouble. There are some really good saddle makers on this sight that could give you some good advice as well as help you to answer some of the questions you will encounter as you take on this task. I hope this helps Skip

in the posts last week about pictures of different shops and how they are set up I saw a picture of a clicker that could easily be duplicated if a person has some metal working tools and a welder. the poster's name was Randyc. I also believe that Weaver leather has one like that in their catalog. I hope this helps I too have run into the problem of not being able to cut out a lot of parts for a product I make and am looking for a similar clicker. good luck

thank you for this topic it has piqued my interest and educated me as well.

that is a very nice site your leather work is also of exceptional quality. good luck

Thanks Alan that was a great tutorial, I do have a question about the kind of knife used. Is it as it looks in your picture just a standard straight knife? it just has to be very sharp is that correct? what do you use to change the width of your lace? does the knife just change position in your plastic ring? I am going to have to try this one out

I was used to heavy saddle skirting leather and did a checkbook cover of 4 oz and when I was done tooling I held it up to look at it in the light and realized that I had been using too much force and could see several spots where I had gone all the way through. you have to be really careful and check you work from both sides so you don't make the same mistake I made. good luck

Alan did you cut your lace yourself? if so how about a tutorial about cutting rawhide lace. it is one of the hardest things I have tried to do and to get nice looking lace that you have pictured you have to be good at cutting to get it that uniform. thanks for sharing Skip

Hey thanks for all the good feed back. I didn't mention that she did complain about my starting price which is $2,000 and felt it was a great deal to pay for a saddle. so I am still going to let her know that I cannot take her money and that she should take my suggestions and find another saddle to fit her horse. Most of the comments are what I have felt and discussing it over with my financial advisor "My wife" she has similar feelings in that I should send her on to someone else, not necessarily another saddle maker but to a retailer that sells a lot of different saddles. thanks again for all your comments and Johanna for making this forem a viable entity for us to come and get some of the additional help we may need take car and happy leather working. Skip

No problem just want to help out, I too have the stohlman's books and they are very informative and I would tell anyone that they are a good buy. but I also agree with Bruce that you can learn from anyone and everyone when it comes to leather work. there are things I have learned from the people here on this forum that I have begun to use in my daily work with leather. so keep an open mind and do what my mentor Fred Harsant use to tell me is that "Nothing is impossible"

I was at a Horse Expo this last weekend and a Woman asked me to fit her horse for a new saddle. I brought up some trees to check for proper fit and told her what I was doing to make sure that the tree I would make for her horse would fit properly. then I asked her to show me the saddle she had been using. She told me that she had it custom built about six years ago for aproximatly $1500.00 She then pulled out this very old looking and brittle saddle for me to check out, I asked what happened to her saddle? She replied that she put it in to her bath tub to clean it and that she didn't get clean enough the first time and did it a second time. There wasn't any natural color left to the leather and if I took a piece of it my hand I could have ripped it. in fact it looked as though it had sat on her fence for a couple years in the weather. I told her that she basically had ruined her saddle and attempted to teach her the finer points of cleaning to which she basically ignored me and kept talking and asking me questions about my abilities and whether I could actually build her saddle for her. I proceeded to infor her of my skills as well as the extra training I have continue to get from various classes tought at different leather trade shows as well as talking to other saddle makers. After talking to this woman and finding out that she has been riding horses most of her life, yet still didn't know how to take care of her custom saddle, this person isn't without and education either she actually teaches in one of the local collages in the area. After considerable thought and talking to a few others about the situation I described above I have decided that it wouldn't be in my best interest to build her a saddle. Now this is where you come in and share what your thoughts are and let me know what you think about my situation.

Just thought I would add my 2 cents about books. Here in Utah we had a saddle maker by the name of John Hopper who wrote a book which is pretty complete, has lots of detail and he explaines things simple enough for the novice person to understand. It just so happens that there is one of his books on eBay and the price this morning was about half of what I paid for mine 12 years ago. this book is a hard bound book and is well worth the hundred dollars that I bought mine for. Good luck in you search for just the right book as everyone out there has something that the others don't have or the aurthor explaines something just a little differently that will help you achieve your goal to build your first saddle.

very nicely done what does the inside look like are there pockets how is it finnished on the inside did you line it with some light weight leather? so many questions. very very nice the patterns flow Like to reiterate WOW!!!!

your work is great I really like the bears face and the paws look pretty real looking to me. is there a way to make the bear picture bigger meaning to include more of his head. Very nice work!

very nice work, your knots look very precise and professional. is this a set you are selling or did you make it to use for your own pleasure? again great work where did you learn to braid like this. keep the pictures coming.

there are tools called round bottom creasers that come in different sizes and when the leather is damp or what you would call cased you run the bottom edge creaser down the edge and it will put in the lines you are asking about. Gomph, and CS Osborn are the most common ones found. check out ebay for some of these tools as they seem to be pretty plentiful.

very informative and interesting post, I really like seeing the old Hamley's there is a lot of history in leather and saddle work that the Hamley's new store is trying to keep up. I greatly appreciate seeing nice work and the fact that Randy got the history for the owner, that is going the extra mile for his customers. I am sure the owner didn't mind paying his bill no matter what it was.

I don't want to burst anyone's bubble about this paticular post that showed up in some newspaper, however it is a hoax that you can check out on www.snopes.com

just for grins a giggles you could go down to the local tack and feed store and buy a one inch felt pad from them and cut the wheels yourself, Not sure how much your talking about but the felt pads usually come in 30 Inch by 34 inch and you should be able to cut a couple of discs out of one pad to fulfill your needs. hope I am not too out of line. good luck

Thanks for all who posted the great information, I will look into getting a good airbrush for futire work in leather.