Denise

Joe Breti also does some leather work - mainly historic British cavalry saddles actually - so he knows what it is to use a knife like this. John, the guy who showed it to us, is a saddle maker who just loves it. They have given a few to other saddle makers just to get a response and they all have liked it. One wanted a larger handle just for the way it felt in his hand, and Joe could easily do that. It is made of a very good steel that John said held an edge better than all his other round knives. But no, we actually don't have a use for one in our business (though Rod would really like to build another saddle some day).

We had a visitor last week who showed us a very unique knife made by Joe Breti of Coal Creek Custom Knives in Farmington, BC. It was made primarily as a skiving knife though it has many uses. It has a completely flat bottom and an offset handle. It and the others we saw were beautifully made and extremely sharp. Joe does custom work and enjoys experimenting with design. This one has been tried out by a few saddle makers who have been very pleased with how it works. Just thought we would show it off to you.

I should modify it to say "to a human being at Telus in Canada". I think they are harder to find and definitely harder to pin down than an Extra Terestrial...

Adding my best wishes here too Regis. Enjoy your special day!

rbd The original donut smileys were deleted because ClayB's dog had drool all over them from licking off the icing and it was grossing out the members. The coffee is supposed to be good, so maybe a smiley for that will be available sometime. I wouldn't know because I don't drink it myself. I would if it didn't taste so much like coffee...

As everyone may or may not know, Leatherworker.net is totally a volunteer organization with the cost of the site supported totally by donations. I just wanted to let you know that funds are running low at the moment, so if anyone wants to contribute they can do it in My Controls by going to Options on the left hand side and clicking on Purchase Paid Subscriptions, or just click here. In a very generous offer Clay B has offered to donate one of his pictures for a draw. Anyone who contributes at least $15.00 by the end of August gets their name put in for a chance to win one of Clay's works of art. (One chance per member only.) Who's in?

In case anyone is interested, I did call the Edmonton Global TV Troubleshooter line, and found out that they actually have an employee designated as the Telus complaint person!! since they get so many complaints about Telus. That was about 3 weeks ago. One week ago I heard back from Global and today I heard back from Telus themselves, via the Global contact - a "higher level technical support" person who I have repeatedly been told does not exist. Actually, the problem was resolved about 1 1/2 weeks ago by this very person. It was a router in Grande Prairie (which does the whole of the Peace Country, anything north and west of Edmonton, about 1/4 of the land mass of Alberta) which was causing the problem. He told me he figured it out by dealing with a lady in northern Alberta. Later in the conversation he revealed that the way she had reached him was by knowing someone high up in the company and it came down from there. So... there you have it. The only way to get past the front line people in Telus is to know an executive in the company or go to the media. Or contact me. I have his direct phone number and e-mail address and he told me if any neighbours were pulling out their hair trying to deal with Telus, to give them the number and address. So if anyone has problems with dial up service from Telus - let me know and I will GLADLY pass on the information on how to connect to a human being in Canada.

Just click on "live chat" at the top on the right hand side of the screen. That puts you into the LW chat room. We are on a really slow connection now so we will see it that affects anything, but we are looking forward to it!

Thanks Johanna and Kate for all your hard work. Get some sleep now, eh?

Happy Birthday from Canada too! Just checking in today, but it is still your birthday here as I post. In just under the wire. All the best for next year, and the next, and the next...

Beautiful work.

The frustrating thing is that it WAS working much better before May 12th, but something happened to make it not work, at least as far as uploading goes. I did some more checking last night. If I dial the local number, I can't send a 100kb e-mail. If I dial in using the (long distance to me) number from Grande Prairie (largest closest city of 100,000 or so), I can't send a 100kb e-mail. But if I dial in using the Edmonton access number - 800 kb email sent, no problem. And yes, this is repeatable. So the whole Peace Country or maybe even all of the north of Alberta is like this. The cities, which have access to high speed, work well. The areas that have no options and are a monopoly for Telus, don't. Says a lot about the company. If ANYBODY else ever gets out here, Telus will not have a customer left as I have yet to meet one person with something good to say about them. I now have the federal Telecommunications complaint line number, and I can easily find out the number for a few newspapers or TV stations. Maybe that would get some action???

Neat contributions from both of you! I can see a lot of learning happening in this thread even without the leather aspect. Thanks for posting your work and the explanations!

Just got in our yearly supply of hay for the horses for next winter and I was wondering for how many other people makin' hay is a big part of this time of year. (It seems that if its hay you're makin', you gotta drop the g...) If you only have two horses, it doesn't take a huge amount of time to get all you need, even if you do feed for about the same amount of time as they graze. Today I found out that if it is 30+ C and you are picking and stacking - sorry, pickin' and stackin' - small square bales by hand under a burning sun, and you dump water on your husband's head, you get a "thank you" rather than retaliation. So, how's your haying season going?

It hit at least 30 C today - pushing 90 F - and has done so for 3-4 days now. While I know that is a cool day for many of you, for up here that is just HOT! We're not acclimatized to that temperature since it only gets that hot a few days a summer. The good part is that it always cools down at night - at least if you live where there isn't a lot of cement. While public buildings are usually air conditioned, I would say most older homes and not a real high percentage of the new ones have AC. It just isn't needed for more than a few days a year. Plus, a house that is well insulated to keep out the cold also keeps out a lot of the heat. Ours is older and not well insulated. However, I still prefer to live where it gets colder rather than hotter. You can always add more layers but there is a limit to how much you can take off!

I did a bit more research today and called a few neighbours. EVERYONE is having the same problem. Everyone figured it was their own computer and may or may not have told Telus. Since I have the same problem in town, I will try to find a few more people who may be having the problem and get them to phone in as well. Monkey, what is an ISP demarc? The phone number we call is local - probably centered in Valleyview itself (no grey boxes at the end of my 7 1/2 mile long "street"). If everyone who calls 524- etc. to dial in is having the problem, maybe I can get the town to contact Telus and get some action that way. I know the mayor, so may have some pull that way. (There are some advantages to living in rural land.) Any other ideas on what may help to get a big company to listen to a lowly customer? I have checked into the satellite option. Stupidly expensive and what I find frustrating is that it shouldn't be needed. What I had prior to May 12th was slow but good enough for all that I do. So what has changed and why won't they listen????? Grump, grump, grump.

Not an answer, but another question. I have seen a couple of saddles with the skirts so long and pointed so far back that I wondered if they would interfere with a horse bending on a sharp turn by poking him in the hip with that point. Have you ever found this to be a real problem or what do you do to alleviate it?

That would make sense sometimes, but not always. For example, after I post a response here, sometimes it will take 30 seconds to a minute to get the last screen when I click the back button. I suspect there are, at times, things downloading in the background that will slow it up. I wish I knew how to shut off all the automatic update stuff that people build into their programs, especially the windows stuff. But I don't think even that is the whole problem because things will be going well, and then all of a sudden slow to an absolute crawl. If I disconnect and reconnect, it will generally go back to "normal", but not always.

Thanks for the help. Cell service in our yard is touch and go - one bar or often not available. If you walk out the driveway to the road, you get better service, but calling our house would make it long distance. ( No, it is not a long driveway! We are just between two towers. Land line wise 2 miles north is also long distance for me.) Telus has walked me through changing the connection information a few times - in different ways, of course! I will see what I can do about getting a phone and the computer online at the same time. The speed on the internet varies so much, seemingly independently of the connection speed. Sometimes it sits forever before it changes pages and sometimes it goes really fast despite a slower speed. Huh?

Ever since we came back from Sheridan, I have been having no end of problems with attempting to send e-mails with attachments and uploading pictures to the forum. We are on dial up (high speed not an option here). Things were working fine when we left on May 12th. Home on May 20th and problems every since. Computer was unplugged when we were away. I occasionally get an message when trying to dial up that the server has not responded. There have been times when I could not send a 4kb, two sentance e-mail. Generally I keep attachments down to 200 kb max. On the rare occasion they have gone, but most commonly I can't send an e-mail with more than about 50 kb. (I use OE, but the same thing happened when I tried to use Microsoft Office Outlook.) I tried to upload a 40 kb picture last night - wouldn't go. Because it is happening in numerous programs, I don't think it is a software issue. I changed the modem - no change, so I don't think it is a hardware deal with that. I am running AVG. I was using 7.5 when this started and have changed to 8.0, but it was just as bad before the switch. No different if I turn off the e-mail scanner or the Resident Shield. When I take the computer to town and hook into high speed - no problem. (Well at least as I can tell with the light speed things go at compared to what I am used to). When I go to dial up in town - same problem, so not likely to be a local line. Telus - our only option for phones and internet out here - directs me to nice people in the Philippines who go down their list of "fixes" and then tell me to delete things from my computer and that everything will be fine when I disconnect from them and try to dial up. They all say that. All 20 or so (not kidding) of them so far... And no, there is not even an address in Canada they can give me a to write a snail mail letter to - they're it. I strongly suspect it is a Telus problem, especially since our neighbour down the road is experiencing the same thing. Also, the connection speed has dropped to be pretty consistently 26.4. Normal had been 31.2 and 28.8. I am not a computer person. You see most of my computer knowledge in front of you now. Any other ideas on what might be going on and what else to try so I can send proper e-mails again and upload pictures here again? Thanks in advance for using small words and typing SSSSLLLLOOOOWWWW.

Bruce, I had in my mind that the saddles were placed further forward, right on the horse's shoulders because that is more where the riders want to be on these broncs, and that the bars were shaped differently on the bottom to accomodate this somehow. But with the rigging the way you describe it, it can't be put that much further forward than most saddles, can it? We have never built one and I am also looking forward to hopefully hearing from Robin on this to find out more about the "real", not modified, associations.

At the bottom of the screen where you type in your messages there is a box you need to click which says "Add a copy to my Sent Messages" or something like that. If you don't click the box, it doesn't get put into Sent Messages automatically. If you have been clicking the box and it still isn't there, then turn toward Ohio and hollar "Johanna!!" real loud...

carr They are all under the Special Events, Contests and Classes section. They have had just a few so far so you can look back and see what everyone has done for the previous ones. Clay (ClayM) is the guy in charge so if you have questions or suggestions, he's the "go to guy". Have fun!

Timberline lists a trick tree under Current Saddle Tree Styles in their catalogue though they don't have a picture of one. Tree companies often make a lot more styles than they have room for in their catalogues so if you call your regular supplier they make one too.

Two years old. 2,530 members who answered "yes" to "Are you human?" (though we may wonder about a couple ). 29,783 posts, not including about 21,000 "crashed" posts which will return at some point. You're doing good! Congratulations to Johanna and her crew (Holly, Kate, Art, Dave, Bruce, ClayB, ClayM and any others I have unintentionally missed) who not only had the vision to see what could be done, but the knowledge to put it together in a way that works well for us computer neophytes and the wisdom to keep it directed down a good path. As a late-comer to the group I now see how much work goes on behind the scenes to keep it looking this good up front. Thanks and appreciation goes out to you all.