HorsehairBraider

Thanks Brian! I'll do a search on that term and see if I can get more examples of it. It's a very cool technique.

Troy - that's not quite it... I don't know if I can link to a pic from the guy's site or not. OK nope, just tried it. When you go to his index page, there's a pic of a large wooden round base (perhaps of a whip handle or some such) and that is what I'm talking about. It's oriented straight up and down, and the rawhide has been worked up it from the bottom to about half way up. This is one of those times when I wish you could see me waving my arms around in the air... although that probably wouldn't help much either. :D

@SilverSaddle1: Holy Smokes! What an awesome collection! Now that is a wonderful sight indeed. Do you have a website with these listed one at a time? I would love to look at them. They are just beautiful. I've never been near one of these in my life although I would dearly love to be. I've always loved these saddles.

Thanks for the link, he does beautiful work. He also does metal work! The language appears to be Spanish - at least, I can understand some of it, and I don't know Portuguese. I was interested to note he does some fid work that is similar to hitching horsehair - where you have one long piece of rawhide that goes around the core in a spiral, and many pieces of rawhide that make half-hitches around the spiraling piece. Anyone else do fid work like that? I'd love to see it if so. Also note that really cool fid he uses! I wish I had one like that!

I would think cowhide would be fine for that use. An English riding crop typically has a stiff but flexible core (sort of like a fishing rod) and therefore the leather would not be that stressed. It would not be the strength that you need here, but the looks of the braiding. That sounds like a great project, and I hope you'll post more about it!

I use it all the time. You can print out a sheet with ALL your packages for that day, and the postal employee just scans that ONE time, and gets the info on everything! Pretty cool and a real time saver. Some addresses it won't accept which is annoying because you have to do them by hand. However if you had to do them ALL by hand that would be terrible. Saves you money too - you get Delivery Confirmation for free when you use the on-line services. If you ship a lot, it can be a pretty significant amount. I would recommend it.

Alan, beautiful work! I love the way you shape your bosals, and the length of your nose button. It's obvious this was made to fit a horse and to be used every day.

I used to teach spinning, and people would ask me what the "best" spinning fiber was. I'd ask them, what is the best car? Maybe they'd say a Lexus. OK, I'd say, I'll go out and buy a Lexus, and when you next see me I'll be at the feed store with two goats in the back seat, trying to cram hay into the trunk. A Lexus is not a good car FOR ME. I live on a farm, I need a TRUCK. So the answer to the question, "what is the best leather?" is another question: "What are you making?" If you are making a bosal, the answer might be one thing. Are you making some roping reins? Maybe something else might work. Need something for the kids, so it's OK if they leave it out in the rain? Maybe another thing entirely. You have to look at each situation, decide what sort of stress or abuse that item is going to get over its lifetime, and fit the material to the situation. Sometimes one thing will work, sometimes another. Truth is, you can use a LOT of different things to braid. Sometimes, even baling twine might be the "best" for that situation.

Nice, Brian! Man, that 'roo lace braids up nice. I just did a stampede string with it and I like that stuff. Your knot is real even and just very nice. It's a great piece and I bet she will love it!

The beveler section looks like it would handle 3/8". Actually I think it would go a little wider, but not sure. I tell you what, this thing works like a charm. I used to *hate* beveling. Now it's actually fun. Not to mention FAST.

You know what I say? "I do not charge extra for using your materials." That way they know what a DEAL they are getting.

I'm going to chime in with Hilly. I have one of these and they are AWESOME. The work is just effortless. I used to dread beveling but no more! Now it's actually fun. Contact White Buff and see if you can get one from him.

All right, Crystal! How very nice of you to agree to help moderate on an internet forum - a thankless job if ever there was one. Hopefully being on *THIS* particular board won't be quite so onerous! Good for you, and welcome, new moderator!

Jerryrwm nailed it. As far as cores go, you can use about anything. I'd try and find some fairly stiff cord, that's pretty thin. Every now and again I've been able to find a nice hard twist cotton cord, that's only about 3 or 4 mm in diameter. Another thing you can use is cheap cotton cord, but braided in the 4-strand. That should give you a lot of practice at the 4-strand! :D

Bullwhip - just go read the thread "Fid Work" - as I am replying it is the second thread under this one. Troy posted a tutorial on fid work. That's what you want, I believe... check it out and see.

I just bought a 25-yard roll (22.86 meters) for $54.00 US. Don't really know of a cheaper place to buy it; everywhere I've looked it's fairly pricey. Well, I can imagine a kangaroo is hard to skin, the hides are smaller etc. so maybe that's why.

I agree. You learn to start out loose. Your first casa or foundation knot might look a little bit loose (not TOO much) but when you add in the other passes it just all works out. It's not really that hard, I don't think. I just did some leather braiding after a long period of not doing it (normally I braid horsehair of course) and it went just fine. Although you have to start out a little loose with horsehair too. If not it gets so tight it breaks the hair.

Here are a couple of ideas: Blunt your fid so it's not so poky. That might help in the "punching holes" part. When you tie your knot, take a look at the distance between strings. Try and make the strings all at the same angle. You have a group that slants to the right and a group that slants to the left. Try and make the strings as parallel and even as possible. If you can keep them like that you should be OK. I too tie knots at the right tension right from the get-go, so I don't tighten knots; I learned how to braid from taking apart old work, and carefully writing down whether a string went under or over. When you just look at the finished knot, you can't tell if the braider did it loosely and tightened, so I had no idea that's what people did. Oops. Sure saves a lot of time if you do it that way though, so I suggest learning that method if you can.

Because they don't work... that's why. (Remember, Johanna's house has NINE! And it still gets hit...) Here's a link to an article about it: linky. This is the conclusion - basically that they don't work well. I've read other articles that claim the effectiveness is very limited, to about 5 sq ft or so. You would need a lot of rods to cover the average house. And even then, some believe there is just no stopping a downward-striking lightning bolt... if one of these bad boys wants to hit your house, there is not a lot you can do about it. Sadly. As an addendum, a lady just wrote me to do some custom work. This weekend, she had SEVEN HORSES hit and killed by a lightning bolt. Now sure, I've lost money, time and so on - but at least no one was hurt, and none of the animals were either. It could have been a heck of a lot worse.

I'm one of those "I can see it in my mind" type of people. I can visualize three-dimensional objects, turn them around in my mind to see every angle, and that' usually how I design. However, sometimes you have to change. For instance I'm making a stampede string for a hat. It's braided leather, with horsehair tassels. I planned to put a "pass" of horsehair in the leather knots and that all worked out well and good, it looks really cool. All except for that last knot... the one that ties to the two pieces together and slides up and down. As I was braiding it, it started to get a little too tight. So I had to change for that knot, and now the stampede string has a horsehair pass in the knots all except for that one. If the person I'm making it for does not mind that sliding knot being so tight (it *will* loosen up over time) I may end up putting that extra pass in the knot. But for right now, I think it would tend to make the piece not work well so I had to change a little from my original idea. No one should feel bad if they don't design like others, though! As the old saying goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Also, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If what you do works for you, why, that's the best way for you to do it.

Thanks LBbyJ. Your first picture did not show up... it said "file not found", but the link to the blog is wonderful. I love that type of rawhide work. (I also noticed some gorgeous silver work!) Very beautiful, I'll have to watch that blog in the future. I'll have to think about the book... I'm always looking to learn new knots! My Spanish is OK for basic stuff but I bet the book uses terms that I would not know. Food for thought.

Can you tell us a little about the book? I have not been able to learn much about it, just that you can get it. What sort of things does it cover? Are the diagrams or pictures good enough so that someone not fluent in Spanish could understand it? (I speak some Spanish but would hardly call myself fluent!) Did you, yourself, learn a great deal from the book, or not so much? It looks like the same author wrote another book about braiding. Have you ever seen that one? If you can answer any of my many questions, thanks very much!

I don't have this problem (because most of my customers contact me via the internet) but a friend does. Don't know if this is true... but she always answers her phone with her business name. She says that some of them are not allowed to call a business, so they hang up. Some kind of rule about it, apparently. As a warning, if they are calling to try and get you to sign up for a merchant account, it's most likely a scam. Someone was doing that to another friend and when she asked for a reference, they gave her a number at Chase. Turns out the person was a scammer, but knew the number for a legitimate company and gave that out as though that was their company. It was not. Chase collected the information from my friend about this scam and hopefully shut it down, but there will always be scams. Now, if you want to have some *REAL* fun with these guys... do the counter-question form found here. You might even be able to find out what toothpaste they use!

I use a single stitch on mine, hiding it under the sweatband, but I have also used a tiny dab of glue. And I do mean tiny... I use the tip of a pin to put it in place. If I use the glue method, it's a tiny dab on each side, and I use an all-weather white glue. It's small enough that if you pull on it, you can easily pull it off without damaging the hat. If it's a custom hat the person just had made, they sometimes prefer this to the single stitch method. However the single stitch method is more secure.

Hey, thanks Johanna - I've been reading those sites, very helpful! NINE lightning rods?! I grew up in OH and remember the storms... I can just imagine!