gtwister09

Here's an example of one of the eBay saddles that Steve mentioned. Regards, Ben Dale_Harwood_Ray_Hunt_Wade____eBay_.pdf Dale_Harwood_Ray_Hunt_Wade____eBay_.pdf

One of the things that I have started doing is to capture the eBay auction with Adobe Acrobat Professional. All the pertinent information is included in the PDF file. You can also use a shareware package like Bullzip or PDFCreator to print to a file. The only difference is that with Acrobat Professional that you can delete and add pages which is quite handy when there are several additional pictures of the saddles. I generally save the additional pictures and then combine them into the original PDF. A handy method of capturing eBay auctions or web pages that you are interested in. Regards, Ben

Bruce, WOW! This was one of the first things that I observed in removing stitches for skirts. Every time that I think that something is common sense I am reminded that even the simplest of things are overlooked if they aren't taught to someone. Once again a great reason for sharing this information before it is lost forever. Regards, Ben

I have been reading through many of the saddlemaking posts a little at a time. In talking with many older saddlemakers (never had the privilege of being able to work under one of them but struck up some good friendships over time) this was what I derived from their discussions. I will say that it was what I was taught. I was taught that a saddle blanket (assumed to be a Navajo blanket) may crawl out from under the saddle. This was due to the woolskin not being correctly installed in the proper direction. NO-NOs - NEVER TO BE DONE From them, I derived two major NO-NOs. These were to never angle the skirt across the woolskin or to turn one skirt opposite of another. Even though this may seem an economical use of a woolskin it denotes poor quality and you should reject the woolskin. These would be definite reasons for the saddle blanket to crawl or slide out from under the saddle. As I said these were NEVER TO BE DONE per all of them. Placement of skirts on woolskin Here's what I derived from these conversations. (1) Place the front of the skirt on the butt of the woolskin and (2) Place the bottom of the skirt along the backbone or center of the woolskin. Justification for Placement of Woolskins Butt Placement to Front Skirt Reasons stated for the butt placement were twofold (1) Hair growth on a horse [ brushing a horse from front to back was smooth whereas brushing from back to front was going against the hair growth and made the hair stand up. (2) Saddle blankets are unlikely to move forward as it is pushed against the shoulders and withers as well as going against the direction of the hair growth. Center Placement to Bottom Skirt Reason for the bottom of the skirt being placed along the center of the woolskin was that this was the thickest portion of the woolskin and this is where the greatest wear was at. Other things to make sure of was to work around the parts where the wool was light and always make sure that you had an extra 1-2" of space away from the light ot skinned portions. However with that said I worked on a ranch for a while after high school and used a Slim Green saddle on and off. This saddle was a pain because the blanket (Navajo blanket) would always slide out from under the saddle on the right side especially when riding uphill. At the very end we used a newer type orthopedic pad and this pad did not slide out at all. They had another saddle that was a production type saddle that had a similar problem and the orthopedic pad didn't slide out from this saddle either. I later had an opportunity to talk/discuss with Slim Green about this particular saddle and woolskin placement. He assured me that he NEVER had anyone ever complain about that. He also stated that he would NEVER swap directions or place them at an angle and that he always put the skirts on the woolskins in the same direction. He also conveyed to me that these were considered quality issues that a quality saddlemaker would never make with placement at an angle or placing the skirts in opposite directions. Several others have also conveyed that sentiment as well. Years later I was discussing this with Bob Dellis and he just laughed. He said when they were building saddles that they had one person whose job was to review woolskins. This person who reviewed woolskins had two different jobs to perform. These were to QC the woolskin and check for nap. The quality control portion of the job was to reject the ones that had issues. Here's what they considered to be issues (1) Not large enough - 1st step in rejection. (2) Any other defects like improper tanning or knicks in the woolskin that couldn't be worked around. (3) Here's the one that surprised me --- Ones that had the wool going in two different directions. He said that these woolskins were rare but had seen about 15-20 during his lifetime. (4) Diagonal naps were also rejected. The other portion of the job was to determine the nap of the woolskin and mark it. They used the same method that has already been described with using your hand to determine the direction. Sometimes they did not follow the standard direction. He also confirmed what we had seen with the two "slipping" saddles that an orthopedic pad would usually correct the woolskin placement issue. He likewise said that these old rules or guidelines would be less of an absolute due to the fact that we were getting jumbo woolskins and that many no longer used Navajo blankets but instead used some form of orthopedic pad. I found it interesting that G. Hachett, Hidemechanic, likewise mentioned the denser pads and jumbo woolskins as being reasons that the traditional placements could be updated. Likewise he also mentioned diagonal naps. Regards, Ben

Steve, Like you I go and admire the well-built saddles as well. Yes most of the time it is junk. The two areas that I go to almost every day on eBay are the following... Sporting Goods > Equestrian > Riding-Western > Saddles and Crafts > Leathercraft > Leather Tools & Treatments > Other Leather Tools Interesting tidbit of information concerning the contract Hunt saddle! I have kept up with your blog [up until September :biggrin: ]. It would be great to see some of your shared photos and such as well. Regards, Ben

Lindsay, It's been a while... I have seen them for sale used on the following sites. http://www.campbell-bosworth.com/ http://www.ferdco.com/ Regards, Ben

Johanna, Sorry to hear about that. I spent many years as an Industrial Engineer and one of my functions was performing ergonomic evaluations, correcting designs and such. I was working in a large manufacturing shop that had lots of machining operations that included hand operations such as deburring. It also had many engineers who performed computer aided manufacuring and design. They generally spent more than 10 hours a day performing operations on the computer. These evaluations were done on people with CTS, RMI and other things like back problems and such. A major aspect of the evaluations also included finding out what things they did at home and hobby as well. This was to see what other things could have contributed to the ergonmic issue. Many of them would pick up grandkids, do crotchet work, gardening, woodworking, golf, tennis or any number of things after work. Every thing we do to twist, pronate or anything else unnaturally to the wrist contributes to it. Any amount of weight any distance out from your torso will create a moment arm that essentially increases the weight as it goes out from the torso. With that said you should try to keep your wrist in as neutral as a position as possible and with as little weight as possible. Stretching is also good but don't overdo it. Likewise the best thing that I can say about ergonomics is that it is about reduction of these factors. RARELY can we elimiate all of them. This was the reason for gathering the additional information so that we could identify actions that we could eliminate or help them reduce these contributors. Now to your maul versus mallet question. From an ergonomics standpoint the maul when properly used is better designed to reduce the forces and twisting associated with your wrist. The mallet will make you more tired over the same amount of time and it will start to create sore shoulders and elbows. Many state that mallets make them start to get tennis elbow. I personally stopped using mallets and started using mauls when I started doing ergonomics over 16-17 years ago. Regards, Ben

We have had a few discussion lately on certain splitters but I thought that I would ask for a more comprehensive discussion. I have used four or five of these splitters a little but I thought that I would ask others with a whole lot more experience to weigh in on the Pros/Cons. Please detail any issues and preferences that you have for the following makes, models and types. Make and Models Landis Model 30 Osborne Twist handle (#86) Osborne (#84) Tandy's High Tech Chase Pattern Kreg Osborne 8 Inch Harmon 9 Inch Campbells Keystone Harmon 12 Inch Randall Champion Weaver Turner Woburn Neels American Types Plier Crank Lap Pull Pattern Twist Regards, Ben

Skipknives, Absolutely GORGEOUS! Great execution and design! I will have to give it a whirl on some wood. Thank you for the picture. Definitely worth a thousand words! Regards, Ben

Some additional information/terminology about buffing and polishing Polishing - This generally denotes removal of material from the surface. This is generally accomplished with sandpaper. microfine grits and/or coarse compounds like black emery. Buffing - Generally denotes a smoothing operation that produces high luster or mirror finishes. Usually buffing wheels and buffing compounds are used. It can be divided into two separate steps (1) cutting and (2) coloring. As I stated earlier buffing and polishing compounds are generally used interchangeably. They refer to abrasive fillers that are usually combined with greases to form into solid bars or liquids. Yellowstone is generally a dry compound but it also comes in bar form. It is generally on the scale between white and red. It is close to the same level of fine as green which is generally used for stainless. I did not include it on the chart. Here's the levels from coarsest to finest -- Black Emery --> Brown Tripoli -->White Rouge --> Green Stainless --> Jewelers or Red Rogue. Then along comes Blue All Purpose. Cut Buffing - The preliminary step to coloring usually with a coarser buffing compound. It removes scratches and smooths out the surface. Black emery is the coarsest and brown tripoli is next. Sometimes brown tripoli can be used to cut and color at the same time with softer metals like copper, brass and aluminum. Color Buffing - This is the step that brings out the best or maximum shine. It produces the mirror like finish. As stated earlier brown tripoli can be a double-duty compound for the softer metals. White is used to color stainless, steel, brass, chromium and aluminum. Likewise green stainless can be used as well. Red rouge is used to produce the mirror finish on gold, silver, sterling, platinum and sometimes brass. As shown these are generally precious metals thereby getting it's name Jewelers rouge. See the earlier chart for materials and compounds to use. Remember the cutting and coloring. Ceramic Blades I have used both the brown tivoli and blue general purpose on ceramic blades. ZAM I have only used ZAM on stainless to this point. However it states that it could be used on any material that green stainless bar is used upon. The brown tivoli was used to remove a slight scratch in the blade.

The names Buffing compound and polishing compound are generally used interchangeably and refer to fine abrasive fillers combined with greases which are formed into solid bars or liquid. Polishing Compounds are similar to sandpaper in that they are used from coarse to fine. A work piece that is severely scratched may need to be sanded down with sandpaper before polishing. Once the scratch depth is minimal on the work piece it is advised to start with the coarsest compound that is applicable to the material being polished. From there one should than move down to the next compound and so on until the desired finish is achieved. NOTE: It may not always be necessary to start with the coarsest and go all the way to the finest. This will depend on the condition of the material being polished. Jewelers rouge or red rouge is the finest compound originally developed by the jewelry trade for buffing precious metals. Blue all-purpose polishing compound is one of the most versatile compounds available and can be used on plastic and all metals. I have also attached a PDF of materials and compunds (from coarse to fine) that you might find useful. Regards, Ben Materials___Compunds.pdf Materials___Compunds.pdf

Luke, Check these out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaps Regards, Ben

Here's a picture of some type. Regards, Ben

Mike, We have made so many different ones. Most of them were made for individual stamps except for our last ones. Some were hollowed out to reduce weight. Some were made from hardwoods. We even started to make one that would have configurable individual tool holders that could be moved around in a base holder but as the number of stamps increased over 500, it became problematic to continue to with the individual tool hole design in any fashion. -- Some were simple holes in small chunks of 2 X 4's and 4 X 4's. -- Some were made from styrofoam foundations with epoxy coverings. -- Some were made on a circular rack that spun around and had various levels for individual tools. -- One that fit in a Craftsman tool box (Came from one of the leathercraft magazines). -- We also made the carrying case from leather magazines as well (smaller one with individual holes for tools and a leather case that snapped onto a wooden block. -- Some designs were even angled pieces of 2 inch PVC mounted on a holder so that the tools were in bunches. The final one that we ended up with was a design that placed tools together in pockets or holes. Our design was tailor made to fit our specific workbench with four different tool holders that could be carried and also used to display tools for tooling. Swivel knife holes were also cut into them as well. It was an adaptation of a design by Verlane which was designed somewhat off of the idea of saddlemaker's rolls but in a rack that could be carried. This is included in another post but I will include the link here rather than reposting the filel. It is post #13. http://www.leatherworker.net/forum/index.p...mp;hl=tool+rack Regards, Ben

Here are some more possibilities.. http://www.tata-tatao.to/knit/matrix/e-index.html http://www.printfreegraphpaper.com/ http://www.paperprintout.com/paper/graph-paper/index.php If these don't work you can google some more possibilties. Regards, Ben

I initially reviewed the saddlemaking and carving due to the generosity of another person and then I purchased all of the ones that you mentioned. I have found all of Jeremiah's videos to be great learning tools (3 Silver/Engraving, Saddlemaking and Carving). My only wish is that he could do more of the videos at this time. I give them all a thumbs-up. Video work is good throughout all of them even though they are over 10 years old. Lighting is good. Explanations are good - you do get some of Jeremiah's colorful sayings and such. He strives to always share his work and his hands aren't in the way blocking what he's doing. Hope that helps. Regards, Ben

Here's a quick tip if you don't want to use a knife to cut between punched holes you and you have a bag or oblong punch. Use the bag punch to cut/punch out the straight edges and then you don't have to worry about overcuts with the knife if that worries you. Regards, Ben

Yes they generally do make them the size that you need. However with that said sometimes you may need one that is thicker (the material going through it is thicker than normal-----maybe two or three thicknesses of leather). Then you would have to utilize a regular punch (some people like to use a drill press for cutting holes with regular puches) on each end (making sure that the diameter of the hole will accommodate the increased thickness) and then cut between them with a knife. Edging and finishing the slot follow after that. Hope that helps. Regards, Ben

Bag or oblong punch..... Here's a quick picture of one. They come in various sizes.

I think that you would be quite surprised with the cellular connections. Right now I am on my laptop with a USB model with 1 or 2 bars. Here is my data from dslreports.com. 382 Kbs/s Download 47 Kb/s Upload 182 ms latency Even with a poor connection it is still more than 7X your stated dial-up speed. PayPal and eBay do have some merchant areas where you can get detailed information about costs, plans, etc... Regards, Ben

We have done just about every method that has been mentioned (gold foil, computer fonts, pyrography, lasers, etc). Here's some insight that might help. Foil Press & Typesets We have the Foil Press that can handle about 18" X 18". We have used it some but not lately. You can spend a TON on sets of type for these. We use the foil press even for non foil related embossing. We have had good results all the way down to 6 point text (1/12"). Depending upon what you can find these types for they can run from around $30 for the smaller sets for one font size up to $200 or more for a display typeface that is larger than 1". So you can see that the cost can add up quite quickly because you only get one size in one typeface. Using the foil press to hold these makes it quite nice and easy to perform the task but you can easily make a holder for your type with little effort. In fact Deb showed that in her article. The only thing to watch for is some of the type is quite soft and will deform with a small amount of pressure so you have to watch out for those sets of type. The foil press of this size can run you a good amount of money as well. If you aren't planning on foil then make your own holders. Lasers I have messed with lasers on and off for more than 15 years for cutting various metal products to embossing wood, acrylic, stone and leather. Started out programming these to cut large amounts of aluminum plates for gaskets (if memory serves me right they made between 10-12 million of these a year on the industrial lasers). We've used them even to cut out large (4 ft X 6 ft) silhouettes for ranch signs and so forth. These desktop machines are quite expensive in the smaller sizes. You can do a google search for laser engravers and see what comes up. One of the better brands is Epilog (http://www.epiloglaser.com). They generally run $10K plus even for the small #18. The prices go up quickly after that for larger sizes. Another more affordable laser is put out by A4Dable Woodworking (http://www.a4dableww.com). Last time I checked they were running between $2500-$4500. Both of these companies offer good support and generally are very willing to help with any questions that may arise like maintenance, replacement costs, software and so on. One of the things to consider is consumables (if gas is used), replacement lasers and software to run these. Check the hours to mean time to failure and so forth. A cheaper laser engraver may have a lower number of hours that it can run before failing and the same cost for laser replacement. Several that we have looked at would have been a lot more costly when replacement lasers were figured into the total cost of ownership. Some of the products can be performed on vector based graphics and some on bit-mapped graphics. Different programs are generally required for each. With the vector programs it follows a vector cut while the bit-mapped ones are swept like a dot-matrix printer. Would suggest that if you want to do lasers to check if there is someone locally that has one before you dive into purchasing one of these. (even industrial lasers will perform some of the work for you). We have used the same set of vendors that cut steel plate to do embossing with letters on acrylic, stone and leather. Finding someone who specializes would be better because we do get charged quite a bit extra for pre-cleaning the laser bed when we have a piece of leather shot. Pyrography Equipment here varies greatly but there is beautiful work that can be done here. Google searches will give you tons of tools to choose from. Then you could use computer fonts, freehand or anything else to complete the lettering/embossing. Hope that provides some insight. Regards, Ben

From one of Bruce's Chester Hape discussions, Troy's name came up. Here are a couple of sites that show his work. One is his own and the other is one with his brother. Enjoy! http://troywestsaddles.com/saddles.htm http://www.wbsct.com/ Regards, Ben

No issues here. I can get in. Regards, Ben

Chris, My suggestion is to look at these sites. I have kept some of them in my bookmarks because this question comes up with many people in the past. They will educate and also help with the selection based on your criteria. They have compare functions of the specifications as well as image comparison. A visual try before you buy... http://www.imaging-resource.com/ http://www.dpreview.com/ http://www.digitalcamerareview.com/default.asp?newsID=3222 http://www.testfreaks.com/digital-cameras/ http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/ Regards, Ben

Steve, Who's petal border stamp is that? Regards, Ben