TroyWest

Jim Redding, Thank you! Bruce, Thank you! I'm a little disappointed you didn't comment on the leg cut on this swell, like, hey, that isn't in the same place as my L.T.M. So go ahead, ask me. Buffalo and Go2Tex, thank you guys.

Timbo, thank you very much! Greg, I tool my basket binders on the bench but I prefer to tool the floral carved on the roll, as I did this one. I just have more accurate borders this way.

Here's a saddle I recently finished. I always enjoy seeing everybody elses saddles so I hope you enjoy seeing mine. I collaborated with Jon Watsabough on the tree. It's an O.Y. with a leg cut. I made the conchos also. They are sterling on sterling. Customer wanted crosses on them and I put his brand on the middle concho. I showed my latigo holder because this is the first saddle I've used this new firm stamp on. It's from Tim Harper at Harper Mfg. I won it several yrs. ago and forgot about it. I called him recently to say howdy and he said hey, I owe you a firm stamp! So thanks to Tim Harper! Feel free to critique me.

Billy I have used acetone to thin Barge cement. It's available at the places you mentioned.

J.W., Your saddles have continued to improve over time and I appreciate your desire for excellence. The overall look of this saddle is very nice. I know your customer will be happy. Since you asked for critique and opinions, here are my thoughts. The first thing I see when I look at this saddle is a ranch cutter fender on a wade. It doesn't hurt anything and of course it will work fine. I know you have cutters in your background and that influence is strong. I have a good friend who also makes a lot of cutters and he puts the same fender on his wades. I always think he should modify his fender to have more of a classic wade look. So much of what we do in saddlemaking is for looks, purely visual. I mean once we get the function, and you have the function, everything becomes about looks.Yes, that is nit-picky, but if you weren't nit-picky yourself you wouldn't be using such good leather, hardware, and trees. Your flat plate looks good, however I dont like to see the inside or top stitch line of my flat plate showing. It's another aspect that doesnt hurt anything but just another visual aspect to think about when fitting everything. The outer edge of your mulehide is skived and put on with the skived edge showing. If you need to skive it you should put the skived edge to the inside. It looks more professional. I have been nit-picky but again I want to say the overall appearance of your saddle is good. There is so much to learn in this buisness it seems a never ending study. Keep up the good work J.W. Troy West

I would say no, they are not. The problem with doing it that way would mean you could not adjust your stirrup leather for different lengths. Another problem with this particular saddle is the Blevins buckles are right on top of the rigging rings.

Bobocat, I really love your 2 finger carving. Could you share with us how you created the mirror image effect?

Yes Timbo, you are correct on the weight, Bob said it was about 20 lbs. less than a regular saddle. You cant really tell from the photo I put on but the ground seat goes over the top of the cantle and that is what you see nailed down on the cantle back. There is no separate binder to sew so these make pretty fast as well.

Yes, you would need to nail it or put a couple of screws in it. Bob said he's roped a lot of things in this rig and it has held up well, never using more than a 1 1/2" strap on the front rig. He said if it works on those Mexican saddles it ought to work on one of these.

Sorry it took me so long. Ignorance can be time consuming Spoke with Bob Douglas today, wanted to make sure he didn't mind me putting this on and he was more than happy for me to do so. Also got a little history. Said he started trying to find comfortable and lightweight saddles after he broke his hip many years ago and just started riding some bare trees with rigs on. Said he got the idea from reading a Will James book called 3 Mustangers. The guys in the book wanted to ride as light as possible and came up with a stripped down model. This is one of the styles Bob came up with.

Bob sent me a picture of one he made for himself. I'll try to get it on here.

I was talking with Don King one time and he made the comment that a saddle does'nt have to have skirts. Remember the old McClellands? Leather sewn right next to the bars top and bottom with no ground seat. Bob Douglas and I were talking about stripping a saddle down to be light weight and he sent me a picture of the saddle he rides. It's a tree with a ground seat, a small set of skirts that are about an inch bigger than the bars, about a 1-1/4 inch strap that goes thru the gullet and back down to an o-ring rig front rigging ring and a set of stirrup leathers and fenders. Nothing but rawhide showing on the swell and horn, and cantle back, on a wade tree. It did have an o-ring back rig as well. Pretty light weight stripped down model. If you built your skirts 2" bigger than the bars it wouldn't hurt. Remember, pack saddles don't have skirts at all either. Higher quality saddles do have skirts and are lined with woolskins which can help relieve pressure from riggings as Bruce mentioned. Some guys do build very stiff skirts to distribute pressure but I think a well fitted bar is the best foundation for weight distribution. I have seen some high end reiners with a layer of dense foam under the skirts and lined with chap leather in place of woolskins. The guys that had 'em seemed to get along O.K. I dont know about long term. A saddle shop much further south of me here in Tx. close to the coast had a problem with some bug getting in the wool and eating the wool off the skirts. Had to replace the wool so frequently they stopped using it and used felt exclusively. A lot of those saddles came into our shop and my brother replaced the felt on some of those old saddles.

They will not hold up like a wood tree. I've see horns jerked off, fronts jerked off, bars broken in a dozen pieces.

In the floral category John Willemsma's saddle won Best Workmanship and Best of Show. It's the 1st picture in the photos. Don Butlers saddle won Best Floral Carving. Thats 2nd row 2nd saddle from left Gene Bader won Best carving in the geometric class. 3rd row 2nd saddle

Shelly, Everything Darryl just said I agree with. I have done a number of belts where I tool 'em, line and sew, then hold one end of the belt in one hand and the other in my other hand and just run it through the solution, sometimes twice. Then just let it dry. On a thin chap top I think I would just apply it with a dauber on the surface, after I tooled it. I havent tried it in a spray bottle but it should work. I think you'll like it on your chap tops. Obviously I recommend you experiment on a small scrap first but it should work well for this application. Troy I havent noticed any loss of detail in the carving after it was dyed black either.

Doug, It looks like the ground seat is too round, from base of cantle to base of cantle. It can be fixed but you have to take the seat off. As it is it's sort of like sitting on a log. It doesn't take long and you're quite uncomfortable. A seat like this makes you feel like you're sitting on the saddle rather than in it.

Jon, Since you asked for a critique, Heres my .02. I love the tree, great shape on everything, swell, horn, cantle. Personally, I wouldn't have put a welt on that swell, but I know a lot of guys would and there is certainly nothing wrong with it. The welt you did looks excellent, flawless, and just purdy.Your tooling around that welt is also nice and clean, and all your tooling flows well. I think the horn should be tooled also but I have recently done the same thing on a smaller horn. Your cheyenne roll looks just beautiful. The only negative thing I see is a little bit of space showing between the back edge of the right housing and the skirt. I know it's nit-picky but you're too good for me not to be nit-picky. Overall it's a really nice rig.

Congratulations on your new shop Andy. I know you'll enjoy it. I'm building myself a little tree shop now.

One other thought Shelly is that most western bright cut engravers simply use the optivisors. Gun engravers have gone to using a microscope system where you are literally looking through eye pieces like a microscope with great magnification looking down at an engraving block. Not at all practical for tooling, and they are pretty expensive, starting around $1250.00 and up from GRS. I get along well with the optvisor for tooling because you can flip it up and down easily but I do hate to wear it.

I've been wearing the optivisor to tool with for several years, the one that Dave just showed. I already had one as I use it for engraving silver.

I see that Weaver has it, but it looks like only by the gallon.

Hadlock and Fox carries the same mauls that Robert Beard used to. (800) 274-6017

For what its worth, I used to work for a saddle company that used Resolene as a finish on all their saddles. The employees, who mostly spoke Spanish called it leche, the Spanish word for milk. It was applied straight out of the bottle with woolskin. It does look a little scary til it dries to a nice shiny finish. Over the years, doing a lot of repairs, my brother and I found that saddles finished with resolene would not wash or take oil thru the resolene. Its a fairly permanent finish. That may suit your needs fine on a holster but we dont like it at all on saddles. Another experiment Jay Lynn Gore and I did one time was to tool 2 pieces of leather, put resolene on 1 and neatlac on the other, let em dry and then applied oil, just to see if it would penetrate. The oil would go thru the neatlac in a few hours but it never went thru the resolene, even after days. We prefer Tankote because it can be washed and oiled thru. Obviously holsters dont get the dirt and grime a saddle gets and you may be happy with the results and the permanence of resolene on your holsters. It is certainly a good protector if you want to keep out stains . Just my 2 cents.

I have to agree with Jim Redding here. A number of years ago, Jay Lynn Gore and I did an experiment of casing leather. Jay Lynn is a well known tooler, the owner and maker of Gore tools. We cased a piece of Herman Oak leather to perfection, overnight, til it was exactly right for carving and then he tooled it. Then we took an identical piece and simply wet the surface and started tooling.When both pieces were tooled and completely dry, no one could tell which piece had been cased and which was not. The color was identical. Even we couldn't tell, except for the fact that we labeled the back. There is certainly nothing wrong with casing if a person chooses to do so, but in my world I often have to go to work without it and I dont even think about it anymore. I do a lot of tooling. I often will dip a fender to start and start laying out a pattern. If I have to stop I just turn it over on my rock and lay a piece of plexiglass on it to slow the moisture from leaving, but if I go all weekend before I get back to it, It will be fine. I prefer not to but it's o.k. I have used pro-carve, but I absolutely cannot tell that it makes any difference in the ease of cutting for me. If it works for you, great. Maybe it has to do with how hard or soft the water is. Do an experiment. Take 2 pieces of leather as close to identical as possible. Wet 1 with Pro- carve and 1 with water. See if 1 actually cuts easier than the other. Either way you'll have your answer.

Well, normally I tool my swells on the saddle as one of the last things I do, however, on this saddle, everything being one piece I could actually tool the whole thing on the bench. It being an a-fork I could tool it and then put the whole thing on without damaging the tooling on the front.