Website of Tree Maker Rod Nikkel

[bruce johnson]

Rod and Denise.

I am very thankful you are here. I am looking forward to your insight into this whole area. It seems like we all can learn to build on whatever we choose to use, but there is just not much good information on how to choose the tree to start with. That was and still is a major concern of mine. Bill Reis asked me several years ago at a show what I would like to see. My first suggestion was to have a discussion group with some saddle tree makers and saddlemakers so we could all get close to being on the same page. Make it easier for us to communicate with each other. Hasn't happened yet, although Pete Gorrell has done some tree fitting classes.

I am looking forward to your contributions. As far as I can remember, other than your previous articles in LCSJ, there has really never been much information and discussion coming from a tree maker. I welcome it.

Bruce Johnson

[Cowboy Crafts Online]

Denise,

I hope you are ok with me posting your website here. I am just happy with the trees that I have gotten so far and think they are the best trees on the market. I just wanted other people to know about your trees. I am glad that you have responded to comments made about your trees. I believe someone that has worked out of the saddle and builds saddles for those that work out of saddles will never say anything bad about how your trees fit.

Ashley

SnakeHorse Saddle Shop

[David Genadek]

Mr, Nikkel,

My comments were not directed toward you as a personal attack I said: "I don’t mean to pick on Mr. Nikkel here because it looks like he is doing a better job and making a bigger effort to understand what he is doing than most. I very much commend his efforts in explaining leg based sizing versus seat size, as this absolutely should be the standard we work off of. My point is that our lively hood depends on the trees we use and in the end we are the ones that take the flack from the customer. As saddle makers we need to start pushing the tree makers to a new paradigm that will give us an advantage in the market place."

Your paradigm is very much in line with the rest of the industry in fact you are making efforts to expand it in a positive direction. I think you will find that if incorporate twist along with the concept or orientation to what you are currently doing you will find that the rear of the bar can also play an important role in stabalizing the saddle during roping.

Bottom line for me is I have no need for this list. I have my tree company and my saddle company. I have more business than I can keep up with for both companies. I have no need to prove anything to any one. I have learned a lot by working my way through every aspect of this industry and I am willing to share that openly with all of you.

David Genadek

[Cowboy Crafts Online]

David, can you show us some of your trees and saddle that you are building or are having other people build for you which ever it is?

[David Genadek]

My web site is aboutthehorse.com

The saddles you will see are more of a production saddle I have borrowed techiniques from both worlds to try to hit a market between the factory saddle and the custom saddle. The focus of this line is proper fit. You will notice that I am making a cordura saddles also, which was a tough for me to do but that line is now about 50% of the business.

I have e-mailed my 3d guy and asked him do make a few virtual trees up that are semi transparent that you will be able to see the over all shape better. Looking at a picture of a tree really won't tell you a whole lot.

Usually when I question someones credability I google thier name to see what it pops up. Credible people will genererally have quite a bit but you have to sift out the marketing driven promotional aspect and see what people that have worked with them have to say.

David Genadek

[quote name=snakehorse saddler' date='May 5 2007, 04:44 PM' post='4367] David, can you show us some of your trees and saddle that you are building or are having other people build for you which ever it is?

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Thank you all for the welcome. We do appreciate that.

Bruce is correct when he says that there isn't a lot of information coming from tree makers. Speaking from the position of someone who hand crafts saddle trees, there are probably a number of reasons for that. One would be that most tree makers we know tend to be relatively solitary people. They don't get a lot of phone calls. They don't work out of store fronts so they don't have people stopping in to visit. They just spend day after day out working in their shops - alone. And they like it that way!! As well, none of the hand crafted tree makers we know of are looking for new customers. That is why if you go on the internet looking for them, there is a severe dearth of information. The saddle making world is a small one, and the people who want to buy this type of tree do all the tree makers advertising for them by word of mouth. No websites needed. With most of the hand makers turning out between 80 and (an incredible) 200 a year, and a lot of the guys who build on these trees having wait lists of months to years, no one needs to take the time to advertise or give out information. They just need to stay in the shop and build! Another reason is that tree making has a lot of technical aspects which are very hard to explain in writing, and can be easily misinterpreted. It is hard enough to show someone who is with you some of these things. Getting it across in words is extremely difficult. There also may still be some of the old school of "don't let anyone else know your trade secrets", but we haven't really met with that. The tree makers we have met and talked with have been open to share how they do things once they know you are really looking to understand how they think and not abuse the information they give you. But maybe the biggest reason is one expressed to us by another maker that we met at Sheridan a few years ago who also makes his living hand building trees. He said something to the effect of, "As soon as you seem to know something, someone is out there to take shots at you and knock you down. I don't need that, so I just keep quiet and build trees."

That is why our website was supposed to be (we were originally told by Telus) non-Google-able. And it wasn't - for about three months. Then it appeared. Such is the internet. It was started to be an information site that was easier, faster and (lets face it) cheaper than mailing out photocopies of our articles as we have been doing for years. The articles started out when I (Denise) heard Rod explaining the same thing over and over to saddle makers on the phone. If figured that if they had something in writing, maybe with pictures, it would be easier to understand. We started with one (that has been reworked multiple times by now) and they have gradually grown over the years. Then one of our customers said, "You can't get this information anywhere else. Why don't you get it published?" That was the incentive behind the LCSJ articles.

If there is one thing you may hear from us over and over again, it is that "Every tree maker does things differently". Our articles apply to our trees and the way we do things, and can't necessarily be extrapolated to others. The numbers given definitely don't apply elsewhere. There are often multiple ways to approach a problem, and multiple ways to solve it. Giving one answer on how we solved it may be interpreted as meaning that the other ways are not as good or wrong, which is not what we want to do. And hence the trepidation in saying anything at all. It is easier just to keep your head down and build trees.

But we also enjoy helping people understand more about trees. It is fun to talk to saddle makers and hear their opinions, learn from their experiences, find out what unusual requests they have had recently and maybe figure out how to do something different to fill them. We enjoy hearing the different accents on the phone and finding out how the weather is all over North America. (Maybe we aren't as solitary as we like to think.) This forum thing is brand new to us. We still need to learn the etiquette and rules, not to mention the technical stuff on how to post. But maybe we can help someone in some way. Or maybe we will just confuse everyone totally. So please, for whatever we post, please remember the disclaimer - "Every tree maker does things differently."

[Regis]

Denise & Rod,

Although I will never be a saddlemaker, I welcome you to this forum and appreciate your method of doing business and sharing ideas. You are amoung people who mostly share what they know and don't claim to know everything (nor the only way that is correct). You mentioned "learning the etiquette" but, in reality, your example already sets a pretty high bar.

I like that "in the shop alone" concept as that is the way I like to work or play.

Again, welcome from a real leatherworking amature but, no amature in life.

Regis

[Romey]

It is interesting what you can find sometimes when you Google your name. This time we found someone saying that none of our trees would fit a real horse. On another thread there is another person saying that saddle fitting doesn’t have much to do with the saddle. And there are a couple (thank you) who appreciate our efforts to communicate some information. It is with a bit of trepidation that we have decided to post here, but we felt that we did want to respond from our viewpoint.

Just to let people know more about where we are coming from - Our web site was originally set up so we could direct our customers to it. We wanted to communicate more easily with our customers, to explain how we build our trees, why we build them the way we do, and how we think about saddle trees (and life). Our information articles come from our opinions, based on our experience and the information we have gained over 11 years of hand crafting individual saddle trees as a full time profession. We enjoy learning more, which is why we keep detailed records on each and every tree we build, why we have a “library†of different horse’s back shapes, and why we listen to saddle makers. We also enjoy helping others who are interested to learn more, or at least think about things from a different view point, whether they agree with us or not. This was the purpose of our website.

Rod comes from a working cowboy background, and while we build for many different types of horses and uses, a fair proportion of our trees go into working rigs all over North America. These saddles are used hard, for long hours, by people who make their living on horse back. The comments we receive back are consistently positive, and we are thankful for that fact. If our trees work for these guys, we know they will work for the pleasure riders too.

A big part of running a small business is knowing who your customers are. What does this person want to accomplish with their riding? Some people just enjoy being with their horses and pleasure riding. They don’t generally ride for great lengths of time or ask a lot of their horses. (They also don’t generally order custom saddles, unless they have way too much money.) Some people want to build their horse into the best athlete and partner he can be in whatever discipline they prefer. They tend to ride each horse for relatively short time periods (often less than an hour), but they ride intensely, concentrating on their horse and his body, asking him to be as specific as possible in the maneuver they are working on at all times. (They may want a custom saddle specifically geared to their discipline. Most of the specifics would have to do with the top of the saddle, though riding a horse which is always being asked to move in collection makes a difference on the bottom side too.) A lot of our customers don’t go out to ride with the sole intention of spending time with their horse, or building their horse into the best athlete and partner he can be. That is part of what they do (and some do it very well), but it is often a side benefit. The main goal is generally to check that 15 miles of fence, round up a few hundred head of cattle, or get those cows doctored for foot rot. The horse’s back will change shape with every one of those hundreds of steps he will take in that four to twelve hour period. Sometimes his hind end will be underneath him and he will “round up†more, especially if he needs to turn quickly. Sometimes he will be going flat out to get past that cow. Sometimes he will be asked to concentrate hard on his job, and sometimes he will be allowed to relax as he moves between more intense jobs. This is the horse and rider we build for.

That is why we use the wood we do, the thickness of hide that we do, and the construction techniques that we do. (We don’t say that you can’t break one of our trees, but we haven’t had a broken one come back yet. We do say if you do break one, we want to hear the story, because it will be entertaining!)

That is also why we build our trees to fit the way they do. It is very true that the closer the shape of the entire bar is to the shape of the horses back the more stable the saddle will be. But it is the wither pocket that is the best area of the horse’s back to hold the saddle in place when a 1000 lb animal at the end of the rope tries to pull it sideways. We build trees so the front bar pad fits into the wither pocket behind the shoulder (without interfering with the shoulder). This then determines where the rest of the tree is positioned on the horse’s back, which dictates the shape of the bars, with all their variables. We work hard to fit the shape of the horse with our starting point as the wither pocket. But since every tree maker does things differently, even if they position their tree in the same place on the horse's back, they will all be somewhat different in their basic fit, and the trees need to be seen to be evaluated.

A tree that is made to be placed in a different spot on a horse’s back will have bars that are shaped very differently because they are made to fit a different area of the back. A tree that is made to accomplish a different purpose may or may not be shaped differently again. It is not that one shape or place on the back is “right†and one is “wrongâ€Â. They are just different, because they are being used for different purposes.

We sure don’t claim to corner the market on knowledge. But we do have a lot of experience and a lot of satisfied customers. And our customers are not just the riders but the (generally) more knowledgeable saddle makers, some of whom have been building for many years and are highly regarded in their field. So to read that someone who, to our knowledge, has never seen one of our trees, let alone tried it on a few horses, bluntly condemns us, saying that we are “way off†and that “none of (our) trees will fit a real horse†is disturbing, to put it mildly. It also pushes the boundaries of “not using this bulletin board to post any material which is knowingly…defamatory, inaccurate or abusive…†as stated in the Forum Rules and Terms. It is fine to have strong opinions and to state them. Let’s just state them as such and be respectful in the way we do it.

It will be interesting to continue to read some of the topics here. Bruce’s idea of getting ideas and opinions of the different parts of the tree is a great one. Lots of good questions and discussion starter in that first post in Bars and Bottoms. It will be interesting to see where it goes. I am sure we can all learn.

Thats the kind of logic that would make me want a saddle built from your tree. Very informitive thread, welcome to the forum!

[T Moore Medicine Hat Saddlery]

I have read through Mr. Nikkel's site and must say it is on of the most eloquent stating of the current paradigm for building trees, I have heard to date. Although he is very much in line with the same backward thinking that the rest of the tree makers are using. His explanation of fitting the horse clearly shows why the industry is in the state it is in. The three main points where he is way off are the twist, rock and orientation.

Lets start with twist. Anyone that has looked at a sampling of horses cannot deny that twist is a major factor. The idea that you can have one twist and adjust it through the gullet to fit a range of horses is preposterous. If the range of angle change wither to rib cage were consistent then you could accomplish what he is saying by altering the angles of the arches. Unfortunately both the range and rate of change differ dramatically. I have attached tracing of two backs and super imposed one on top the other to demonstrate this point. So why do the tree makers persist in this absurd notion? Because building and creating the complex shape is no small feat. In order to accommodate different fronts and cantles it is necessary to create common surfaces. These surfaces are important and changing the twist alters them. For the tree industry to acknowledge the reality of twist would mean a mass proliferation of patterns and it would add many layers of complexity to the ordering process and their organizational structure.

Point two, is rock, yes rock does change significantly but there is a direct relationship between twist and rock. When this relationship is ignored we start micro fitting and instead of fitting the horse’s actual shape we are then fitting a moment in time and subjecting our work to the influence of the rider, ferrier, dentist, and bit maker. You can only get an accurate assessment of the rock if you consider the how well the horses ring of muscles is being used, you should never fit a tree to a horse who is being ridden upside down meaning the rider is tightening the top line and stretching the underline. When those factors are included you will find there is a limited amount rocks needed.

Point three is orientation, which is perhaps the most misunderstood element of tree construction. Mr. Nikkel states that there should be a ½†difference in the spread in the front of the saddle to the rear. The rear being narrower. He does state that this is how he does it. In this statement he is essentially telling you that none of his trees will fit a real horse. Horse’s bodies have a horizontal orientation, unlike us; their spine is horizontal to sea level. Because of this they can be horizontal to differing degrees and it is the job of the tree to be the exact opposite orientation of the horse in order to level the saddle seat. A horse’s orientation can be found by locating the base of the neck and comparing it to the point of hip. The only time you would ever want the spread of the bars to be narrower in the rear would be if you had a horse that was up hill oriented. I personally have never seen a horse with this conformation. Gaited horses have a close to level conformation and most Quarter horses have a down hill conformation. There fore no tree made should have a narrower spread in the rear.

I don’t mean to pick on Mr. Nikkel here because it looks like he is doing a better job and making a bigger effort to understand what he is doing than most. I very much commend his efforts in explaining leg based sizing versus seat size, as this absolutely should be the standard we work off of. My point is that our lively hood depends on the trees we use and in the end we are the ones that take the flack from the customer. As saddle makers we need to start pushing the tree makers to a new paradigm that will give us an advantage in the market place.

David Genadek

In responce to Mr Genadek

I want to say that I have been building saddles for 25 + years and have used trees by most of the tree makers and Find Rod Nikkle's trees to be VERY SUPERIOR in every way. The quality of the rawhide work is some of the very best The fit of the wood is absolutely the best I have seen. The fit of the trees he has made for me have been very good He is a artisan in wood and rawhide and I feel privelidged to be able to buy trees from him. On top of that he is a gentleman of the first order and his wife Denise is very polite and has always been very understanding and helpful when I had a problem. I have ordered trees from him in the past ,I have trees ordered from him now and I will continue to order trees from him in the future. His trees are easy to build on and have real class look in a the finished saddle. If you are someone who uses a saddle to make a living riding the big country and dont just ride for fun on the weekend you will quickly know what I mean when I say they really fit the horse.Our families have been in ranching all our lives and we know what saddle fit is .The saddles on your website are a totaly different level of saddle from what these are. This forum is for exchanging useful information and not badmouthing someone .

Terry Moore

Medicine Hat Saddlery

[steve mason]

Howdy;

I am new to this forum, looks like a great place to exchange ideas and learn some.

Now in regards to this post about Rod Nikkel and his trees, I have used Rods trees for years, about 80% of my customers are working cowboys, they spend almost all day, every day in a saddle, on many different horses that are in all kinds of condition and age etc. These guys use their horses and saddles hard, they must have saddles that fit, and fit well, that is why I use Rods trees, because I have to use trees of this quality to meet my customers needs. Simply put ROD NIKKEL'S TREES FIT HORSES.

So when I read something like "In this statement he is essentially telling you that none of his trees will fit a real horse." That is just plain wrong, why don't you insult his mother while your at is. Rod and just about every other good craftsmen I have ever met including myself, build because it is our passion, not because it is our job. Sure we make a living at it but the real thing that keeps us going is the passion and desire to continually learn and make better gear, whether it is saddle trees, saddles or whatever. So when you tell another craftsmen that his product which he puts his heart and soul into does not work, well that's just a low blow, and Rod and Denise should get an apology. And to say something like that about Rods trees when you have never made a saddle on one and put it to hard use to find out if it works or not just shows your ignorance. Now I am not trying to start a fight or get into and argument here, I just couldn't sit by and say nothing because what was said was wrong on many levels.

Edited May 29, 2007 by steve mason