DennisLane

Brent. The short answer is yes, that is the idea. What you have to do to make this work for you, is make up a chart for every tree maker that you use. If you talk to your tree maker or makers they may already be using the system and have done this for you. There is a learning curve on the calibration side. The cards take care of the identifying of the shape. Dennis.

Hi Hugh. I don't know why the link on the web site doesn't work, the orders that are placed there are coming though fine. We did have a lot of problem with spam at one stage, and when we changed the web site that was fixed. I am a member here and do look in from time to time.You can PM me though here if you like, or my email address is , dmlane at aapt dot net dot au , hopefully if I write it this way I won't attract unwanted traffic. For those that order a set of cards please be patient, it is taking about 4 weeks on average for me to process orders. I do apologize for the time frame but it is the best I can do for now. For those that have received their set of cards. If you need any help though the learning curve, please don't hesitate to contact me. Dennis

Thanks Jim, I have been trying to think how to explain why this is not a good example of a well made and designed Australian stock saddle. It would take me for ever, and more than likely sound like gobbly goop . Dennis

Hi Curbstrap. I haven't seen this type of saddle made in Australia for several decades. When it was, it wasn't high on the totem pole. When you look at the current price of a well designed and made Australian stock saddle, starting at $4500.00 AUD…….. YOU DON'T GET SOMETHING WORTH WHILE FOR NOTHING. Dennis

Hi All The hanger that I use, I designed and it is cast in manganese bronze. It will accommodate 2” leathers, I utilized one of the features of the Hamley hanger. That is, where the stirrup leather hangs, that part of the hanger is convex in shape. This puts the pressure in the middle of the stirrup leather, relieving the edges of excess pressure, when the stirrup is position either in front or behind the perpendicular for what ever reason (going up or down hills). This helps to prevent the stirrup leather from breaking or tearing where it goes around the hanger. The wider the stirrup leather the more likely hood that this will happen because, the pressure on the edges is greater the wider you go. Dennis

Hi all. I agree with David. In my opinion you can’t beat a well fitting tree sitting in the correct position. Well said David, it is about time the public is informed about this sort of BS. Dennis Lane

Hi all. First of all I would like to thank all those that have supported the cards system. It is so pleasing that fellow saddle & tree makers find it as usefully as I have. Originally when I first thought of sharing this system with a few friends, I had no idea that it would take the direction that it has. It has grown and developed remarkably from its initial concept. Now that more and more people are using it and more data is gathered, the system will eventually cover a larger percentage of the range of horses and mules with an increase in accuracy. The way I use it is to advise my customers to measure all of their horses, or a good cross section if they have more than a dozen. If they only have one, measure their friend’s horses that they like the look of. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and in my experience people will buy horses that they like the look of. I like to have at least three profiles from each customer. This information informs me of what type of horses the customer has and the range from the narrowest to the widest. This is what we are now calling the macro fit. This is the information that the saddle/tree maker needs so that they can decide on a tree that in their opinion is best suited to the customers horses. This gives the saddle some scope. I don’t recommend making a tree to fit one horse, to me that is impractical. The horses back is dynamic, so over time what will fit as a four year old may not fit as a ten year old. This leads us to the next stage the cards can be used for. To check and adjust the micro fit of the tree. The setting of the tree relative to the cards must be known. I stamp the settings of the tree on the skirts just behind the stirrup leather slot. They are easy to find and are there for all time. Next, card the horse. You simply superimpose the horse’s settings on top of the original tree settings. This tells you the difference between the tree in the saddle and the shape of the horse that you intend to ride. If the tree is too narrow there is nothing that can be done. If the tree is to wide the difference is how much padding and where you need to place it. This procedure is commonly called shimming (matching the shape of the horse to the setting of the tree) and has been around for a very long time, nothing new. What the cards do is take the guess work out of how much and where to place the shim. I don’t recommend this procedure once the difference is greater than three settings. The cards also have their own language. Once people become a custom to the language. The three dimensional shape of a horses back can be discussed simply and easily by phone, fax, email or by mail. What I advise my customers to do is to card their horses three or four times during the time they are being ridden or in work/training, record the readings and date them. This will allow them to visually observe the changes the horses back goes through from month to month, year to year. As I have said, the cards are a simple tool. Its initial use is by the saddle/tree makers for the macro fit, It than can be used by the horse owner to control the micro fit. This will not solve all saddle fit problems. There a number of variables that also plays their part. What this addresses is how the tree relates to the horses back. The cards are a simple tool to aid us in making those decisions. I am not in favour of the reverse or the male side of the cards in the use of checking the fit of a saddle. There are many pit falls in this method and I think the average person needs to be careful. It takes a very experienced person to do this with any real degree of accuracy. Joanne, your situation is just like many others. You don’t have to be a saddle/ tree maker to gain some long term benefit out of the cards. Once the macro fit of the tree is known, the person that will get the most out of the cards is the person that is saddling the horse on a daily basis. They are the ones that have to adjust to suit the situation, day to day, week to week, year to year. They are the ones that need to know ahead of time whether a saddle is going to work or not. Not just see results of a poorly fitting saddle. Hope this is of some help to you Joanne and to any one else in a similar position. Regards. Dennis

We are in the process of adding an email address and Papal to the web site so people can order and pay for the cards straight from there. It may take another week or so to have it up and running. Until then those who require a set can contact David or myself and we will take care of it for you. Dennis

Hi All. For those people that are interested, there will be a demonstration of my card system at Sheridan during Peter Gorrell's class on Saturday morning May 17th. Dennis

Hi Susan. We will be there early May through to early June. Our schedule is extremely tight. We haven’t got any thing planed for Arizona. I am very interested in your problems & would like to see them first hand. If you P M me your address I will look at our schedule to see if we can squeeze it in if that is suitable. Dennis

Hi all. It has appears that there is a need to explain in more detail about the cards. How they originated, where we are going & what we are trying to achieve. I will attempt do that by going back to the start. Back in the late 1980s I was struggling with my saddles because I felt that the trees weren’t good enough. I couldn’t find a tree maker to produce the trees that I needed to make a better saddle so the hunt was on. I was very fortunate to have Ray Hunt in my shop one day. I was telling him my problems & he said that the man that I need to see was Dale Harwood. Ray also heard a whisper that Dale was coming to Australia to conduct a clinic on the very subject. He did & I was very fortunate to attend. That was in April 1992, the clinic went for 28 days. The next piece of good fortune that came my way was meeting Hans Van Hees. Hans shared the method of measuring horses Backs that he uses. This is basically the same method that most people use to map a horses back using peace of wire or a flexible curve. This is the same method that the cards are based on. Now all I had to do was apply the skills that I had learnt making & fitting the Australian stock saddle with the skills that I learnt from Dale & the method that Hans shared with me on how to map a horses backs. It took many years to develop & combine these skills. Over time I have became more & more convinced that it is extremely difficult or near impossible to fit a saddle because we can’t see how well the bars sit on the horse. So now I control the fit of the saddle by controlling the fit of the trees. From the start I could see the potential for error was high simply because of the very nature of the material being used to take the measurements. It also relied very heavily on how particular the individual was in taking the measurement. At the time the best way I could combat this problem was to keep them & start comparing them with each other, hoping that the errors that I new were there would average out due to the numbers. It didn’t take long before I could see the categories start to form. It took many years of collecting & sorting to get what I thought were the average shapes in each of the various categories that were forming. At this stage I was still keeping track of these shapes by keeping the male side. To collect the information I was still advising my customers to use the flexible curve or soft wire, even with its inaccuracy’s. At the time I couldn’t think of any thing better. I had on many occasions kept the female side of the tracings to check the accuracy, but it didn’t click for many years. Eventually it did & the cards started to take shape. They have undergone many changes & I believe that they will keep evolving for many years to come. For what we know now is not what we will know in ten years time. Originally when the method of measuring horses backs was explained the scapular was the datum & the other 2 measurements were taken at 8” increments. It was explained that you could take them at 2” or 4” increments if you like but Hans thought that 3 was enough. The top line of the spine was also taken. I have experimented with where to take these measurements for a while. One of the things that I noticed when riding a horse bare back was, no matter what horse we ride or what we do while riding the horse we always end up sitting in the same spot on the horses back. I use to call this the bare back position. While researching the anatomy of the horse I learnt that this is directly over the 14v & that this is the centre of the horse balance in the stationary position, so I changed my datum to the 14v. This according to my research is the most consistent anatomical point on the horses back. I still used 8” as my distances between where I took the other 2 measurements. The back of the scapular was & is the point in front that I aim for, in those days the majority of horses that I saw the distance was 8”. I now know that this is not the case & this distance changes for two reasons that we know of at this point of time. 1- Proportionally, a 12 hand pony to a 17 hand horse. 2- Conformation, the slop of the shoulder. The range seems to be between 6.5” to 8.5”. The measure behind is still set at the 8” mark. I tried to line it up with the last vertebrae but I came to the conclusion that this is not consistent. Horses back don’t always have the same number of vertebrae & the length of the back changes due to the same reasons above. The length of the saddle is also a variable, so to me the obvious conclusion is by setting the distance at least we are measuring the horse back in the same place relative to the tree. The back of the tree seems to have more scope for variation than the front. I have come to this conclusion because we see more horses injured in the front of the saddle than we do behind. This doesn’t mean the back of the tree isn’t important it is. I also used the top line of the horse for many years to set the guilt hight for the fork as well as the cantle, but as time past I noticed that the settings for these were the same relevant to the category the horse fits into. At some stage in the development of the cards, (I don’t remember when), I have added the rock card & position it approximately where the centre of the bar would sit on my trees. This card keeps track of the amount of bow the horse has in his back from front to rear. This pretty much explains the cards & how they got to where they were before I started to share them with fellow saddle & tree makers. I don’t think that I have invented anything new. This has & is still being done in some form by many sadder & tree makers. The only thing that I have done is to categorize the common shapes that I had access to. The first person that I shared the cards with was David Morris. He informed me in fact what I had arrived at was a set of G O NO GO CARDS. A system that is commonly use in the manufacturing industry for quality control. When we look around the same method is used to control or grade the size & shape of many day to day items (sieve in grain harvesters, grading metal for our roads, fruit, eggs, vegetables, etc). I have used this system for many years with both my saddle & tree customers with a very high level of success. In share this with others in the industry to see if it can be a useful tool to them in obtaining practically & more accurate information from their customers. This tool has allowed me to make a more informed decision on the size tree that will suit the range of horses that a particular customer has in their string. Next posts I will try explain were I would like this to go.