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Everything posted by Denise
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Verty pretty, Knut!! Isn't the world a beautiful place!
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Ahh... So all those "update your flash player" things I've been ignoring maybe were important??? Thanks for the info!
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Now it is telling me that "This content is currently unavailable". Guess I'll try later...
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I can't seem to get it to play. Does it all have to come down before it starts? How long is it?
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Ray, It appears Elmer is a happy bull. You can tell that he is a bull because he has a ring in his nose, NOT because he has horns. Cows can have horns too! (Working hard to dispel another urban myth...)
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Hmmm.... Remind me NOT to go to a renn faire then...
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deft, , I don't make armour and have never been to a renn faire so I felt totally unqualified to vote. However, if you had a category that was "I like ice cream", I probably would have voted for it! (How's that for an excuse?? )
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We don't kill newbies on LW. We welcome them. We even warn them against eating the donuts, or they may be the first to die! But the coffee's good and safe. Johanna keeps it fresh. Lots of renn faire types around here. Some amazing armour from Prince and a few others. Glad you are here!
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Chris Cheney purchased the company a while back and is selling Harwood Hardware. Here is the link to his thread and website: http://leatherworker...=1
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Fabian, Your son must be very happy with his new quiver. I have put all three of your topics together so people can follow the whole progression of pictures in one thread. Thank you for the time you put into this! Denise
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It is too stretchy to braid with - won't keep consistent width due to that fact - but it is very strong and doesn't break easily. Great to use for stitching rawhide onto saddle trees! There is a lot more hair relative to the hide, and they float, so you have to weight them down to keep them in the water/solution.
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Just to confirm what I think I have figured out from this thread - the cantle is the top part of the sporran? Despite having a lot of Scottish blood in me, I have never heard the term before in regard to sporrans. Can anyone give a precise definition of the word and where it came from?
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Weclome to the forum from a bit further west - Alberta to be exact. Enjoy it!
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Changing Out The Leather Strings On A Saddle
Denise replied to helpinghorses's topic in How Do I Do That?
I'm no expert but I think sometimes it is an easy job, sometimes not. They can be attached on the top of the saddle via screws or nails - easier fix - or some saddle makers drill holes in the tree and put them right through the tree, but under the sheepskin - not so easy a fix. If you can figure out how they are attached or post pictures of what you find as you looking some of the people on here who do know what they are talking about would be able to give you better guidance. -
Regarding the New Mexico State "study" - actually the students did have a dog in the fight. The group that did the study was the New Mexico State Universities National Agri-Marketing Club http://aces.nmsu.edu...ml#anchor_73619 They did it to enter a marketing competition, which they won. http://www.namablog.org/?cat=277 And the marketing plan based on this "study" has both the name of the company they were marketing and all the names of the NMSU students and advisors on it. http://www.ayurveda....dent/10NMSU.pdf This makes me suspect that in some way the company had a financial interest in the work. How else did they just "happen to be there" to try their saddles on some horses? So I see this work more as a survey than a study. What did it show? If you test the random combinations of riders, horses and saddles that are used in real life out there, you will find a lot of high pressure areas. I don't think anyone has published that as recorded fact before, though it is one of the things that we all kind of "know" to be true. Now we have proof. But as far as testing anything about saddle fit to determine why the high pressure areas are there and therefore how to correct them - no. This "study" didn't do that. You asked about other studies being done. I have done a fair amount of digging into the academic literature and I have yet to come up with anything in regards to western saddles. I did hear via the grapevine that some of the studies that ended up being about pads were initially started to be on saddles but they couldn't come up with anything consistent or significant enough to make a proper study so they wrote on what they could, which ended up being the pads. I can't confirm this though. There are a few studies in the literature using the pressure pad testing with English saddles. A 2007 study called "The influence of the width of the saddle tree on the forces and pressure distribution under the saddle" done at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria starts off its abstract with "As there is no statistical evidence that saddle fit influences the load exerted on a horse's back this study was performed to asses the hypothesis that the width of the tree significantly alters the pressure distribution on the back beneath the saddle." In other words, 2007 was the first time it was confirmed that differences in trees really do cause different pressure patterns on the horse! Some of the very few other studies done (all with English saddles) are about the pressure under the saddle during mounting, comparing from the ground versus from a mounting block, or the difference in pressure under the saddle when a rider on a standing horse leans 10 degrees forward or back or to either side. This is the current state of academic research as far as I can find so far. The truth is, as so many have pointed out, there are just so many variables that to isolate just one and test it is a difficult thing to do. Yet if we are going to find real answers to some of the real questions (what is the best shape for the front bar tip to avoid pressure points during movement? How do different rigging positions really affect the pressure under the saddle?) that is what needs to happen. And as Aggiebraider says, it comes down to who will pay for these studies to be done and done without bias? Do we need academic studies to build good trees and saddles? Of course not. A lot of us make our living by doing that right now and there are a lot of satisfied riders and horses out there that show that. The places these studies would come in useful are 1.) settling areas where there is disagreement among those of us who build them as to what is best (when we do things differently and they both work) or 2.) having proof to back what we say when in there is contradictory information being touted as "fact". Experience and anecdotes only go so far with some people when what we say is different than someone with Dr. in front of their name. So if anyone else knows of other studies being done, I would also be very glad to hear about them. The more we learn about what others discover or prove, the more "facts" we know that we can share with others.
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roperdad, Your post is a great example of why "saddle fit" isn't an issue for most working cowboys. They start with a well made saddle - the best they can afford at the time - knowing how important that is. They ride enough that they ride well - quiet in the saddle, not bouncing all over the place. They know how to use padding properly and take care of it, changing and cleaning as necessary. They take care of their horse - loosening cinches when taking a break, "airing out their back" or unsaddling over lunch to give the horse a break. They ride in shape horses that are generally pretty close in body type. Round, mutton withered horses don't make it long on a real ranch string. And if they have to ride an out of shape horse to get them in shape, they notice if anything is starting to go wrong and act on it - changing padding, giving a few days off for an early cinch sore, etc. Put all that basic common sense stuff together and "saddle fit" isn't a problem. Contrast this with a very common senario, a mid-forties to early fifties woman who finally has the means to own her own horse, which has been a dream of hers since childhood. She still doesn't have time to ride a lot, so her seat isn't great. Average rides last less than an hour. She rides a cheaper made saddle on an overweight horse. And one weekend she does a clinic where she rides her horse for maybe six hours a day - and he comes up sore. I'm not putting down recreational riders. Far from it. They are a major component in the horse industry these days. But we have to face reality. This is the rider scouring the internet for information on "saddle fit" or consulting the "experts" of varying kinds because what else could have made her horse sore but the saddle??? That is how she likely thinks. The other factors aren't even in her thought process. If you build primarily for working cowboys, "saddle fit" and its myths are pretty much a non-issue. You know what type of trees to order for the body type of horses your customers ride, and they take if from there. But if you build for recreational riders (and that can be a lucrative market) then you will face all sorts of questions arising from the mis-information that abounds and is copied and re-copied throughout the internet. My question is how can we as saddle and tree makers get that "common sense" information out into places that these types of riders can find it?
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Compound, your English is fine. We can understand you anyway! The stirrup slots were common on an old style of saddle named the Hope saddle, not to mention others. These saddles had the front of the bars exposed, so a stirrup over the bar may have slipped around a bit an not stayed in one place. There is no other advantage that I know of to having them versus having the stirrup over the top of the bar in a regular saddle. The disadvantage is less strength to the bar in that area.
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http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showforum=26 BattleGuide - there is a whole section on Historical Reinactment on here (link above) including some tutorials on making bottles and mugs.Take a look around there for a while, decide on a project and then start a thread asking quesions. I'm sure you will get people ready and willing to answer them. We have some incrediable makers on here. Be prepared for your jaw to drop! And welcome to the forum!
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http://www.vintagegunleather.com/company-marks/mueller_history.html Here is a link to a bit of history of Mueller saddles.
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I'm surprised he has a saddle made from buffalo. Rod made one into rawhide and decided it was too thin for him to use to cover a saddle tree with, so I would think it would make a fine leather rather than a thick skirting leather which is normally used on saddles. But I could be totally wrong here. I'm sure no expert!
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Here is a link to some of the tutorials on the site: http://leatherworker.net/content/index.php/leatherworker-community/tutorials/ Also check for pinned topics at the top of each forum. Enjoy!!
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Tom, Bob is right in that there is a time limit on the edit function. If you want to change something you can either PM me and I can change it for you or just add another post after your first one with the different information, whichever is best for you. Denise