Saddlebag

Vinegar would be my first choice only I'd use a spray bottle and wear a mask. Best done outside or well ventilated area. When dry you might want to try vacuuming if your's has a hose and small brush. I've had good luck picking up the nap by brushing the edge of a dry-as-a-board cellulose sponge. It sure won't cause any damage. Do we get a pic or two before you start?

Head in sand .. laughing. I tried it on the wrong leather. Works great on the right leather.

Denise, I too was wondering about those Drings. The idea is for dragging stuff behind the horse to desensitise but I'm thinking the D s should be facing the other way.

There was a time a saddle company could be identified by the design of the stitching on the seat.

The general public, including coaches and trainers, really have no idea of what saddle repair costs. Most of us don't have a clue with auto fixin' costs, so we sometimes get a second opinion. There comes a point where the cost to repair likely warrants getting something else. Even with the repairs the saddle is still an old saddle that's seen it's better days and would likely be needing more repair not too far down the road. I too will not fix a saddle if it can't be done properly. No shortcuts. I will even write on their invoice that the saddle is unfit if necessary. I don't want it coming back to bite me in a**.

Is anyone familiar weith a flower on a stem, about an inch long, Including a single digit number, on the tree? I will try to get a pic. Someone has inquired to me and I'm not familiar with this mark.

A friend was loaned an economy saddle that has almost zip for fleece. Everytime the horse cantered her pad shot out the back. Proof that the fleece helps hold the pad, especially if the top of it is wool.

I have two weights in the rawhide mauls and have become so used to them, for stamping or whacking a hole punch that I don't think I could switch to anything else.

Glad I found this topic. A gal has a saddle with about a 3" cheyenne roll that is rawhide. It's now looking pretty grubby and some of the polished surface is gone. She was inquiring about my dying the cantle a brown. I've never tried dying rawhide. I have oil dye and spirit dye on hand. I don't even have any scrap rawhide on hand to do some test patches.

I use water and a piece of denim. Never tho't about using spit. At least we wouldn't have to go very far to get some as it's always handy.

HanginH, your not slow, you're careful, precise.

I use a variety, depending on the job. My two favorites are straight glycerin soap which I use mainly on english saddles and Fiebings for western as it has conditioners. You can do the backside of roughout but not the roughout. I also use lanolin bar soap for the dirty sweaty backside of the fenders. I've used Murphy's mixed with water in a spray bottle and mist a very dirty saddle first to help lift the dirt just prior to my soaping it.

From what I am seeing, the horn is a little off. If it's tight then it's a cosmetic issue. As for the cantle I'm not seeing a problem there either. You can't go by the cheyenne rool and it's just leather folded and fitted to the curve of the seat. They are often not quite perfect.

The owner has approved the extra work so the straps have been thro the splitter a few times. It will be ready to go home tomorrow..

Randy, try mending horse blankets. Zippers will seem like a dream job. Try and price those out. One never gets paid according to the time put in to them. If a blanket is badly ripped I'll often flat rate it out at half of what replacement would cost. Here's one I'm still trying to wrap my head around - a blanket had extensive damage. I recommended she'd be money ahead by replacing it. Her logic was - well, some days it's nice to be able to throw an old blanket on the horse. I think I missed something when I was going to school. (laughing)

My patience wore thin waiting for a response so I pulled the flooring nail at the gullet, which was already rusting, and half a dozen staples just to free up the skirt a bit. The big lump is where the stirrup leather bends around the tree near the air channel. The strap is a hair under 1/4" thick. I pulled some of the strap into the air channel and try as I may I can't get it to bend how it should. I'd have to soak it and beat it with a big maul but then it would never be adjustable. The next step is to remove the strap and run it through the splitter to shave it down a little. Even the slider on the blevins buckles are a tight fit which makes it difficult to change holes. I plan on replacing the nails with good brass screws and better nails. The skirt has in-skirt rigging which means the rider is unknowingly relying on staples and nails that rust and break.

The fenders have been shortened, the rivets are in, looks good. Well, sort of. I flipped the saddle over to try to find out why one leather won't budge eve after I'd had them running back and forth reasonably well, and I discovered lumps under one skirt that don't belong there. The saddle has had very little use. I think I'm going to have to umdo the skirts half way back to see what's there and even with a good pad this saddle could sore up a horse and maybe turn into a bronc. The skirts are linde with teddy bear fuzzy fabric and have been nailed in with steel nails which are already rusting and lI expect the staples will break when I try to pull them. Grrrr. This is becoming a reconstruction job. I now need to email the owner with a few pics to get her approval or not.

I know this thread is a year old but Glover Equine in Manitoba (see website) has shut down and has supplies for sale. I just got blanket D rings from them about a week ago and some webbing.

If it has Tires or Testicles it's gonna give you trouble. I am amused. ha ha ha ha ha.

I made something similar using the motor out of an old vacuum cleaner - free.

Has anyone got a set of these? How do you like them. Proleptic Inc sells them and I've been hemming and hawing for several years about buying a set. When one does repair there are always conchos to remove yet not wreck them.

You have to be careful that the bit is correctly balanced both side to side and how it carries when the reins are relaxed.

Mine aren't even card stock. I switched to good quality paper as I'd heard too many complaints about wallets being too fat with business cards. Mine are easy to write on and take up almost no room at all. I'm lucky, my address is already a box number and because I get most of my work from "long distance" my email address is included. There's an old expression, what you heard isn't what I said, so I prefer that my instructions are written in an email. Myriam, I do like your card. Very nice.

When i was in book/document repair/restoration we used a glue called Planatol. This is a white glue that resembles white carpenter's glue except Planatol is water soluble. It holds very well, and isn't real fast to set up. It can be thinned with water. Anything we did had to be undoable so Planatol was our choice. It's at any book repair supply house.