TroyWest

Hope you had a great birthday Bruce. Wishing you many more.

That's great tooling Bob.

The vellum from Hidecrafters is the about the same thickness as a regular sheet of typing paper. I have seen the thin vellum and it is as you described, just too thin and moisture causes it to wrinkle.

I use a lot of vellum. I like the sheets that come from Hidecrafters as they are the same size as a regular sheet of paper. They are easy to use and dont roll up on you and will last for years. It is also cheap. You can see thru it well also. Many times I will draw a pattern on regular paper and then put the vellum in my copier and print out the drawing on the vellum. It will go thru the copier just like a regular sheet of paper. Then it doesn't show all the erasure marks, etc. on the original drawing. I can also buy larger sheets of vellum at Hobby Lobby and Walmart large enough to do a saddle seat or fender. When I'm ready to transfer to leather I spray the vellum that will go against the leather with a product called "workable fixatif", available from Hobby Lobby. It keeps the vellum from absorbing water. Hope that helps, Troy West

John, Personally, I think you are well within your rights to sign the case. Billy Cooks name is on thousands of saddles he never touched, but he designed them. Ford is on millions of cars that he never touched. Calvin Klein is on clothes he never touched. I think personal slugfests are unprofitable. In the saddle world, if you ordered a Chuck Stormes saddle you would know he is the only man who touched it. If you ordered a Billy Cook you would know he didn't touch it. Their names would be on them. I don't see it as a real ethical dilemma. Seems a small thing to be upset about. Just my thoughts. Troy West

I'm sorry to hear of the passing of Ellis Barnes. I just heard today of the passing of Bret Hadlock on April 11. I understand he had gone to Home Depot for some hardware and was to be back for lunch. When he did not return they went looking for him. He was in his truck in the parking lot of Home Depot having died of a heart attack. He was 62. Bret was a great guy. Super nice, always helpful and very intelligent. I always enjoyed visiting with him at the shows. They had sold Hadlock and Fox and he was serving a few years as a consultant to the new buyers who had moved the tree co. from New Braunfels down to Del Rio.

Ray, How would you define a loch? And a moor?

I draw the pattern directly on the swell. I often use one of those plastic circle templates with various sized circles. I find the circle that suits the size flower I'm tooling. Then I can lightly draw that circle on the swell, moving it around to exactly where I want it, and because it is flexible I can bend it over the curve of the swell. Then I put my flower in that circle with the stem where I want it , fill in the inner circle and then the outer areas. Hope that helps, Troy West

Very nice stuff Bob. I've never heard of giving flank cinches for awards. They look great. Troy

I agree Dave. Great looking seat. Troy West

Tool the swell on the tree.

You must be getting really old. Happy Birthday Jim.

Great stuff Bob. Way to go!

I had a good friend that had a 2 legged dog. Really. One leg was caught in a trap and the other was run over by a car. He had the front leg still attached but it was useless so he carried it folded up against his body. So he had a right front leg and a right rear leg. I never could remember his real name so I called him Bipod. He could actually run as fast as the other dogs but when he tried to rear up on you he would fall over. He sat down to eat. We laughed and laughed at that dog and he was a great pet with a great attitude in spite of his adversities.

Deb, I'm glad to know you can still get a catalog. That will let others know they are still available. Ben, Jay was the state champ in his class a couple of years ago. He builds his own guns. Doesn't that sound like McGyver? Troy

You're welcome Steve. Deb59, Jay Lynn Gore was the head tooler for Billy Cook for 30 odd years. As a result he really knew what a good stamping tool was, often designing and fabricating his own out of nails or bolts or whatever he could come up with. He is really a very creative guy. I used to call him McGyver cause he could make something out of nothing and could blow up a city block with nothing but a sweet gum ball. When he left Billy Cook Saddles he tooled saddles for me for a number of years. He started making stamping tools in his spare time. His brother in law, Mitch Botts, encouraged Jay to take his tools to the trade shows, so they did. Mitch was really the push in the marketing area and Jay was the brains behind the tools. They went to the trade shows for quite a few years until Mitch was diagnosed with cancer and passed away. Jay hasn't been back to a show but continues to make tools, getting orders from the many people who had purchased from him earlier. He also lives near Greenville, Tx. where all the saddle companies are and they still order from him. Jay still does a lot of tooling for a saddle outfit near Houston and still makes tools. They used to have a catalog and you may be able to get one still. I'm really not sure about that. You'd just have to give him a call. His tools are great and he knows how to make them well because he knows how to use them well. He's a great guy too. Troy West

Jay Lynn Gore 1327 C.R.2232 Caddo Mills, Tx. 75135 (903) 883-3626 Still makin' tools

Ray, 25 or so years ago an older saddlemaker, Sam Harris, and a retired bootmaker, whose name eludes me at the moment, thought it would be a great idea to have a place where boot and saddlemakers could gather and visit. They contacted a number of vendors who sold to these trades and had the first annual boot and saddlemakers round-up in Brownwood, Tx. It was a pretty small deal at first, but everybody enjoyed it so they decided to do it again the next year. Few more folks showed up and every year it continued to grow in vendors and attendants. Originally, there were no teaching classes or saddle contests. It was something we talked about for years and it developed out of all those conversations. They eventually became one of the highlights of the whole thing. It also became a place where you could bring your old tools and swap, trade or buy. It became too much for these 2 older guys so they handed it off to Eddie and Kathy Kimmel. They moved it to the colosium in Brownwood and filled the thing with leather companies, knife makers, machine companies and attendance grew. Eventually they moved it further north to Wichita Falls, Tx. where they could get a few more folks from further north and have an even larger facility with a lot of hotels. That's basically how it got started. It's one of my favorite places to go. Love to see old friends, make new ones, see equipment first hand, see new tools, etc. I'm sure you would love it. Somebody just needs to pick up the ball over there and give it a shot. Google Boot and Saddlemaker Roundup and it will give contact info. Talk to Kathy and Eddie Kimmel. They are nice folks and I'm sure they could give you lots of pointers Hope that helps, Troy P.S. No dancing girls. Wives dont like dancing girls. They wont let you go.

I laughed and laughed when I read what you said Bob. When I saw all your swivel knives I thought wow, Bob's a junky! Then I looked at mine and I said I'm as bad as he is. Of course I justified it by saying well, I really do use all of them for one reason or another! If you won one of Paul's you must have won the contest! Congratulations! I'm sure you'll love it and it will just fuel your addiction.

Yes, I do design my own patterns. I'm sure all the guys Bob mentioned do as well. If you look at that pattern you can see it's the same pattern in each corner so I really drew one corner pattern and flipped it over to duplicate it. You do need to learn to draw patterns to fill spaces that you have on various items but it is something you can learn and develop. I would start by drawing simple patterns without crossovers and as your drawing improves you can add those if you like. I don't know if you have any artistic abilities or not. If you do, great. If not I have a friend I went to highschool with named Cary Blanchard. He rode bulls and later braided bull ropes. He always would come to our saddle shop and decided he wanted to tool. He started buying tools and started tooling. It was terrible. He would always ask for a critique and I would share my thoughts. I often thought man you should do something else, but he kept trying. It was really bad. I thought he had no aptitude for it. But he kept trying. He would tool something and bring it in for a critique over and over until it started to look OK. Then it began to look better and better and better, and one day it actually started to look good! This was over a period of years but eventually it was really nice. This guy who had no aptitude for it was tooling some very impressive stuff. He then began doing some contract tooling for Ray Holes and then some for King Saddlery in Sheridan and I dont even know who all he has tooled for now. The moral of this story is that I now believe that someone with the desire can learn to tool well with time and patience and practice. So even if right now it's only a dream, It can become a reality. This forum is certainly a great place to ask questions and learn.

That's a great write-up Art. Thanks.

I'd like to ditto the above statement as well, along with adding that you must have a canvas to carve and Bob is an excellent craftsman of the leather items he carves. However he does have a flaw. Bob is a swivel knife junky. An addict. I can recognize it because... well, I've been there. It's time Bob for swivel knife anonomous or leather carver watchers or Jenny swivel knives. Several years ago a circus came through our town and one of the baboons escaped. They never caught him and folks forgot about him. Years later he was killed by a truck but it had been so long nobody knew what it was. They actually thought it might be somebodies relative. Finally they sent for a wise old man who seemed to know everything. He studied him for quite a while and seemed quite confident when he spoke. He said," Judging by those knarly fingers and hunched back from years of overwork. Slick red butt from years of sitting. Squinty eyes and curled lip from years of strain. That's just an old retired leather carver." I'm not trying to scare you Bob, but we have to be careful to take care of ourselves. Just some thoughts from one junky to another.

I do a lot of scrolls in my carving as it is an element I like. As Bob said there are a lot of different styles of scrolls. This is one example of a scroll type carving I did on a briefcase.

Right at the moment, it's 70 degrees here in Texas at 12:50 pm. Should get up to 80 and back down to 50 at night. Really nice. My daughter came home and sat out on the deck to study.

Darcy, I would say that is pretty normal and that was a great deal. It 'll be worth 5 or 6 times that when you get it running and you'll love it. Troy