Denise

Wow! Looks great Clay. Amazing what creativity can do with leather.

I'd love to see some pictures of it if you can post them. It sounds like quite a neat little saddle.

Slava, I'm glad you can sell your work. We'd love to see some pictures of what you make too. There are a lot of people who read and learn and never post. I'm glad you did. Thanks for getting involved here.

Thanks for the update, Steve, and hopefully your actions will save not only other makers from having their images stolen but some buyers being taken as well. I know a lot of saddle makers keep an eye on E-bay. Now that this guy has been pegged and his actions published here and on other forums, hopefully there will be lots of eyes watching out for what he is posting and reporting it as soon as it goes up. Maybe eventually E-bay will get the message...

seveneves, I think this thread will help: http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=1719&hl=string&st=0

Is this where threads like yaklady's on carving the horses and ClayB's on carving his wren should go?

Why can't you donate for free anymore? One leash totally donated costs you the same (compared to selling them) as two at half price. You would be giving them less items to sell, but they would have no input into them either. My reasons behind my thinking: They may perceive "If they can give this to us for half price, then they aren't losing money on it so look at how high their markup is!" - not realizing that the "markup" is your wages. So that lowers the worth of the product in their mind. As well, as was said (the words may not be exact by the idea is) by one very well respected saddle maker when asked about giving a discount to a good customer, "I never cut my price, but I may give them something - say a breast collar - extra. They will soon forget the cut in the price of the saddle but they will remember what you did for them every time they use their breast collar." That makes sense to me!

haywire, Your topic title has H. I. and in this post you have the name as H. L. Sorry, I can't give you any information on the saddle, but I thought the discrepancy should get cleared up in case someone else can.

http://leatherworker...pic=1428&st=0&p DGA. Is this the thread you a missing?

Congratulations Mike.

Just an idea, but maybe you could spend some of your "advertising" money to make things to donate to local charity auctions etc. Your name gets out there and seen by people, plus you get to deal with people in the organizations you may not normally come in contact with that may know lots of others. They remember what you gave and pass your name on when someone is looking for a similar item. Sometimes you even get a charitable reciept, but the best part is that you are doing a good turn to help others raise money for a good cause.

I don't think he sleeps much... Nice work Bruce (again...).

Welcome Ulf! Glad to hear you have your shop up and running!

Not saying no. Just difficult. What's the saying about the impossible taking a little longer? It would take a bunch of people to be willing to leave their egos at the door and be wanting to work together for the same purpose, which in this case would be wanting to set standards in the first place. I think the desire for that is pretty low among makers. (The first question to answer would be "Is this really a good thing overall or not?")It may just take time if it ever happens. I do think it is wise to be keeping track of which way the wind is blowing in regards to standards though. If it looks like someone is going to be serious about making them, then those of us in the hand made/custom world better be aware of it and get our voices heard. The last thing I would want would be to have standards imposed that were contrary to what we feel is correct.

Good discussion. Makes my head spin. So many sides to it (which might explain why I have tried to post a few times and deleted everything I have written so far). Advantages of consistent standards: 1.) Saddle buyers have a much better idea what to look for when they start saddle shopping 2.) Discussion between makers, etc. is easier. Problems with standards: 1.) Who sets them? We are all for everyone following one way of doing things, so long as it is OUR way!! And everyone will feel that way. There is a point to be considered, though. If the saddle industry doesn't set standards, then at some stage government might (and this would happen sooner in some countries than others, but I can see it happening), and who is influencing the government at that stage? Animal rights groups? Special interest groups? Production makers only? Having custom saddle makers having a hand in setting standards would be really important. 2.) How are they determined? Right now it is an "I like to do it this way because..." based on experience and opinion. To set rigging position standards, for example, would depend on bar shape or fork placement, etc. So to standardize rigging positions, you would have to standardize tree construction. How do you standardize shapes, and how do you decide what should be standard? Everything in saddles and trees kind of depends on something else, and there really isn't a starting point. 3.) It ain't gonna fly with the custom makers we have today. Most makers spend a lot of time alone in their shops working on their own projects that their, and only their, name goes on. Trying to contain that kind of individualism with rules... Not in our lifetime - unless they are imposed from outside. See point #1 that we should be aware of. There are two ways to try to figure out which saddle will work on a horse - label it by the saddle specs or by the way the horse is built. Shoes aren't sold by 12" long and 4" wide. They are sold by numbers that are supposed to represent feet. How each shoe maker wants to fit that foot will vary. They may like a shoe to fit tight while you like it looser, thus the 8EE to 9.5D variation in Timbo's closet. But none of them make a man's shoe that they know will pinch his toes. (Women's shoes are different, but then function isn't applied to them as often...) In the same way, it is much more likely that a rider will be able to figure out a horse size than what all the saddle terminology means* so if saddles were eventually labeled with an equine body type (and Dennis's system may lead to knowing if common types occur or how to describe them) that would be better than lay people trying to figure out if they want 90 or 93 degree bars, not knowing that the numbers are meaningless between makers anyway! Right now we have lots of experience and opinion in all areas of the horse industry. What we lack is solid research and things that can be accurately measured or quantitated. Anyone could say "This is the way things will be", but until we know more, I think it would be pretty difficult to have good standards. By the way, a while back a few friends in the industry were talking, not about making consistent measurements, but about getting a consistent terminology for some measurements. The result? We now all know what each other calls things and can understand without explanation between us! But consistency? Nope... *To get a good idea how confused the buying public is on our terminology, check out this thread. They are trying to figure out what "bars" means. http://www.trot.org/...read.php?t=3148

Thanks for that link, Johanna. Just checked ours out. The computer says 31.2 kbps but the test says 26 kbps. I know the dial up users overall are a small group, getting smaller all the time. But most of us are here not by choice, but by lack of choice. The companies who make websites with lots of fancy graphics and dancing bears may not realize that they are losing 5% of their possible sales because their website loads so slowly. Or maybe they figure those of us who live so far from town that we can't get high speed don't want to buy their stuff anyway... (This is also why we appreciate the people on LW who compress their pictures to 100 - 200 kb. We just don't have the time to download a full size picture from todays digital cameras.)

I don't know anyone who is really happy with satellite - unless they compare it to dial up. The air card deal is pretty good - if you have cell service. The quality of your cell service where you live will tell you the quality of your air card service. In our area there are a few companies putting in towers so we can get a wireless connection - different than both the above. Still not as good as "real high speed" in the cities, but not affected by weather and not part of the cell phone service. Problem is the cost of the towers and equipment to get you started, and you need line of sight from a tower to your receiver, so your terrain and trees make a difference. We have a new tower 1 1/2 miles south of us now. Once they get the bugs worked out of the new gear (it is a 46 mile jump from the main tower to this one) then we have a shot at getting something faster. We'll see how well it works for our neighbours before we pop for the $450 installation cost but so far it has potential. The people in our area with air cards are wanting to change over too if it goes well.

Welcome back Beaverslayer! Still wearing the tin foil hat I hope!

You can get English Stirrup bars from Windmill English Saddle Supply in Thompson Ohio. Phone 440-298-3018 Linda M. Williams. They source stuff out of the UK if they need to. We purchased some from there this summer.

Joanne, The tree isn't going to change. If it does, you've got problems. If the skirts have been blocked properly (wet down, formed around the bars so they extend the bearing surface of the bars and continue the same shape outward and let dry in that shape) the fit won't change over time. If the skirts have not been blocked (and a lot of production saddles just put a flat skirt under a tree so the shape of the edges of the bars is pretty much negated) then I can see it gradually forming a bit around the bars, taking on their shape and therefore fitting better over time than a flat sheet of skirting does. I read on here somewhere that "in the old days" no saddle makers blocked skirts, but "everyone knew" that when you got a brand new saddle the first thing you did was dunk it in the water trough and ride it so the skirts formed around the bars a bit. I would like to know if this is really true or just an old cowboy's tale. I do know that you won't get too many people dunking brand new saddles in the water trough these days, even if they are lower priced ones.

Thanks for the information, Linda!

OK. When I click the save it opens another window with just the picture in there. I can click for Save As, but when I get to my picture program, there is no picture there. Just a funny icon (a page with a box and three colors in it). How come? (Computer illiterate of all time...)

Looks very nice Linda. Do you have pictures of the tree totally stripped down? It looks to have a rise in the seat. I'm told that is not wanted now, but horses still have withers. Just curious as to how they used to build the trees. Thanks for posting!

http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=21798 I think this is the one you were looking for Gary.

Thanks for all the information, and for the picture Johanna. Now I know there is such a thing as a track ball! I have an optical mouse and seems to be in good working order. I managed to find and enable the snap to in the control panel, but I don't see any difference in how the mouse acts. What is that supposed to change? Keyboard, monitor and chair are set in a straight line. I have an older desk with an added slide out beneath it. The mouse is beside the keyboard. The arms on my chair are an inch or two higher than I would prefer and that puts my hands about 1 - 1 1/2 inches above the keyboard if the are horizontal, but when I curl my fingers down to type they are pretty flat. I don't have any rest for my hands when typing or when using the mouse. To use the mouse my arm is about 30 or a bit more degrees out to the right, but I tend to hold the mouse straight so my hand is tilted back the other way. Never noticed that before. Johanna, your rest pad is under your wrist. Does it affect the tendons and vessels on the underside of your wrist at all? A neighbour has a similar thing. I tried it out and it just felt weird but it would cut down on the pressure on the heel of my hand for sure. I'll try a towel in there for a bit and see how it goes. Of course, the simple answer is quit using the computer, but sometimes that isn't as good an option and I would like...