Bars and Bottoms

[bruce johnson]

I set this topic on it's own because I think it needs to be separated out from any one tree maker's discussion. I think we have enough varying opinions and experiences that we could enter into a discussion of the various parts of the tree and what we do/don't want. I think we could all gain some perspective. I envision breaking the tree down to its components and discussing each one by itself in its own topic to kind of keep this on as even a keel as we can. I would like to start with the bars and their shape and spread, independent of forks (swells) and cantles. I am going to probably ramble some, and ask a lot of rhetorical questions. Obviously David has some ideas that are not in synch with the current standard, and I would encourage him to expound more on exactly where his trees differ and why. Nothing is carved in granite, a lot of what we do is based on tradition, right or wrong. I also would encourage the exchange of how we fit our bars to a horse, how we order the tree (limited to bar pattern and spread to start with) from our current or a different tree maker, and the limitations we see with our trees. How do we fit the general horse our clients will ride, and how far from great fit is no fit?

Now my opinion only. I don't think we can lump all current tree makers together. Obviously some make bar patterns and have geometries that are different from others. Price is somewhat of a factor, but not always. Some tree companies are making a hundred or more a day, other guys make one every other day. Who pays more attention - no answer. Just like us, some factories make better saddles than we do, and some of us make better than the factories. I have a tree that has rounded pads on the front that concentrate forces in a small area, but gives the appearance of having "flare" for that desirable shoulder freedom. Obviously a round withered muscular horse will suffer if full doubled in this type tree. I have other trees with fairly flat pads. I see a fair amount of horses that these pads provide good contact. I think David posted that he makes some trees with concave pads. Interesting, although I am curious about the rawhide lifting up and tenting, or are they nailed into this dish. If I am correct, this might be a place for a synthetic coating like epoxy.

What about ordering based on handhole width vs. gullet width? If we are using the same tree maker and everything else is constant, does it matter? (again rhetorical) Should we specify both, along with the bar spread at the bottom? What about 2 stirrup grooves vs. one (Arizona bars). Is that back edge of the stirrup leather making a lump right where we have muscle bulge in the stride phase? Does the 1/4" of bar thickness we are saving make it that much stronger? What about the arbitrary narrowing of the cantle gullet to account for twist? Can we make a level seat on a "down-hill" sitting tree? Of course we can, ground seat build ups, probably accounts for a lot of the 3 piece built up ground seats. Is the narrowed channel width necessary for all horses? Which horses need it and which ones don't? Like David I see very few uphill built horses, some of the Arabian/gaited horse crosses are probably as close as it gets. BUT, I see a lot of level or down-hillers. Add a gullet (OK Front width) too wide and we have a downhill saddle and more force toward the front. Tapered insert pads (the 3/4 wedge gel insert pads are pretty popular around here) are kind of a filler. Narrow up the front (or widen the back) and we have the same effect.

Bar angles. Some horses are getting flatter withered and wider. How do we determine what ones need the celebrated 93 degree bars the training clinicians are touting? Are they throwing their 93 degree bar Wade on the two year old QH and then the 5 year bucking Morgan or TB in the clinic round pen regardless of what his back says?? Food for thought.

What about rock(er)? Is too much better than not enough? How do we measure it to tell a tree maker? How do we know what we should have. Does it depend on the horse and his job? If he slogs along at a walk nose-to-tail down the trail, and the rider sits back all day, we probably want it closer than the barrel racer, California stockhorse, or cutter that flexes and extends and is more fit. Big blow out extended strides and the ultimate flex when stopping hard. Bar flare no doubt enters in here too. How much is enough, without sacrificing normal weight bearing surface? How much flex/extension is there in a normal horse's back anyway??

Bar thickness. How many broken bars do we see that were not either (a) flipped over on or ( scored when cutting stirrup leather slots by the makers who build them that way? I do see some of the monstrously thick calf and steer roping trees that do have some major thickness for a reason. Even though the bottom geometry of these bars may be fine the edges are either stubbed off or rounded over. Personally I think a rounded over bar will dig in less than the stubbed off, if the cinches (front and back) aren't pulled for a rodeo run. Is this the saddle we want to brand calves in all day with a little looser cinch? I see a fair amount of Wades that are wider webbed (for lack of a better term) through the stirrup slot and waist area but pretty thin bars. These are old slogging saddles that have stood the test of time and aren't broken. May be a factor of steady pressure vs. a jerk. Obviously the thinner the bars, the closer we are to the horse, the more we feel, the less we torque on his back side to side, and we are all happier.

What about the "close contact" trees with the narrower waists? I have to spread my legs as wide as the horse is. Now that is not rocket science. Does it really matter if the bottom bar edge is 2 inches down my inside thigh or 3"? If that bar edge is tapered and smooth with the horse, I can't tell a difference, but I think that extra 1" of bar width will let me rope something bigger with less chance of damage to my gear or person. This is all based on a tapering seat down the sides too, not the 2 full layers to the bottom bar edge ground seat.

Other factors obviously play into how these bars will fit besides type of activity and conformation. David mentioned farriers, dentists, bitting, the rider, where they ride - hills or flat. The owners can control a bunch of saddle fit with the feed program, conditioning program, saddle pads, and just plain how they ride. As makers we influence it with rigging postion and type, getting these riggings on evenly, and making a seat our rider can sit in to be in balance with the horse (and right on the cantle generally ain't it). That is getting to the top of the saddle, and I don't want to go there yet.

We have factories and one man shops making trees and saddles. We are competing with saddles sold by unknowing catalog and tackstore employees to mostly unknowing customers (both judging the top of the saddle) to put on an animal that can't talk. If he gets sore, they put another saddle on, it may not fit better but is different enough to rest that sore spot and create another one somewhere else. I would really like to see some data from standardized testing of different trees with real-time pressure cell pads during different activities. I look forward to the day of standards, but don't see that happening in my lifetime, and I am not old. In the meantime, I want to have as much information as I can to do the best job I can. I think it starts with the bottom of the tree. Hope this sparks something

Bruce Johnson

[Romey]

Id like to add a side note, I work alot of horses, Iv come to specialize in obviously ranch horses but alot of remedial horses often times i have been the last stop from the buckin horse sale or them sent off to become french beef.

Several time I have found poorly fitting saddle to be the cause of mental if not physical trauma to our equine friends and was the root cause of certain problimatic horses. Compound that on owner caused issues ,as remedial horses are much like a onion, lots of layers of problems.

Horses have one main behavior, being a horse, we, put the other behaviors into them, the good and the bad. So I stress KNOW HOW TO FIT A SADDLE. I have seen it enough actually its first thing I look at when a problimatic horse is brought to me, just to get that out of the way. Im interested in seeing the various opinions here with the saddle makers we have here. Good topic Bruce

Edited May 1, 2007 by Romey

[David Genadek]

Bruce,

Your post is really excellent! I would like to expand on some of your points but don't have time till this weekend.

David Genadek

[Blake]

I set this topic on it's own because I think it needs to be separated out from any one tree maker's discussion. I think we have enough varying opinions and experiences that we could enter into a discussion of the various parts of the tree and what we do/don't want. I think we could all gain some perspective. I envision breaking the tree down to its components and discussing each one by itself in its own topic to kind of keep this on as even a keel as we can. I would like to start with the bars and their shape and spread, independent of forks (swells) and cantles. I am going to probably ramble some, and ask a lot of rhetorical questions. Obviously David has some ideas that are not in synch with the current standard, and I would encourage him to expound more on exactly where his trees differ and why. Nothing is carved in granite, a lot of what we do is based on tradition, right or wrong. I also would encourage the exchange of how we fit our bars to a horse, how we order the tree (limited to bar pattern and spread to start with) from our current or a different tree maker, and the limitations we see with our trees. How do we fit the general horse our clients will ride, and how far from great fit is no fit?

Now my opinion only. I don't think we can lump all current tree makers together. Obviously some make bar patterns and have geometries that are different from others. Price is somewhat of a factor, but not always. Some tree companies are making a hundred or more a day, other guys make one every other day. Who pays more attention - no answer. Just like us, some factories make better saddles than we do, and some of us make better than the factories. I have a tree that has rounded pads on the front that concentrate forces in a small area, but gives the appearance of having "flare" for that desirable shoulder freedom. Obviously a round withered muscular horse will suffer if full doubled in this type tree. I have other trees with fairly flat pads. I see a fair amount of horses that these pads provide good contact. I think David posted that he makes some trees with concave pads. Interesting, although I am curious about the rawhide lifting up and tenting, or are they nailed into this dish. If I am correct, this might be a place for a synthetic coating like epoxy.

What about ordering based on handhole width vs. gullet width? If we are using the same tree maker and everything else is constant, does it matter? (again rhetorical) Should we specify both, along with the bar spread at the bottom? What about 2 stirrup grooves vs. one (Arizona bars). Is that back edge of the stirrup leather making a lump right where we have muscle bulge in the stride phase? Does the 1/4" of bar thickness we are saving make it that much stronger? What about the arbitrary narrowing of the cantle gullet to account for twist? Can we make a level seat on a "down-hill" sitting tree? Of course we can, ground seat build ups, probably accounts for a lot of the 3 piece built up ground seats. Is the narrowed channel width necessary for all horses? Which horses need it and which ones don't? Like David I see very few uphill built horses, some of the Arabian/gaited horse crosses are probably as close as it gets. BUT, I see a lot of level or down-hillers. Add a gullet (OK Front width) too wide and we have a downhill saddle and more force toward the front. Tapered insert pads (the 3/4 wedge gel insert pads are pretty popular around here) are kind of a filler. Narrow up the front (or widen the back) and we have the same effect.

Bar angles. Some horses are getting flatter withered and wider. How do we determine what ones need the celebrated 93 degree bars the training clinicians are touting? Are they throwing their 93 degree bar Wade on the two year old QH and then the 5 year bucking Morgan or TB in the clinic round pen regardless of what his back says?? Food for thought.

What about rock(er)? Is too much better than not enough? How do we measure it to tell a tree maker? How do we know what we should have. Does it depend on the horse and his job? If he slogs along at a walk nose-to-tail down the trail, and the rider sits back all day, we probably want it closer than the barrel racer, California stockhorse, or cutter that flexes and extends and is more fit. Big blow out extended strides and the ultimate flex when stopping hard. Bar flare no doubt enters in here too. How much is enough, without sacrificing normal weight bearing surface? How much flex/extension is there in a normal horse's back anyway??

Bar thickness. How many broken bars do we see that were not either (a) flipped over on or ( scored when cutting stirrup leather slots by the makers who build them that way? I do see some of the monstrously thick calf and steer roping trees that do have some major thickness for a reason. Even though the bottom geometry of these bars may be fine the edges are either stubbed off or rounded over. Personally I think a rounded over bar will dig in less than the stubbed off, if the cinches (front and back) aren't pulled for a rodeo run. Is this the saddle we want to brand calves in all day with a little looser cinch? I see a fair amount of Wades that are wider webbed (for lack of a better term) through the stirrup slot and waist area but pretty thin bars. These are old slogging saddles that have stood the test of time and aren't broken. May be a factor of steady pressure vs. a jerk. Obviously the thinner the bars, the closer we are to the horse, the more we feel, the less we torque on his back side to side, and we are all happier.

What about the "close contact" trees with the narrower waists? I have to spread my legs as wide as the horse is. Now that is not rocket science. Does it really matter if the bottom bar edge is 2 inches down my inside thigh or 3"? If that bar edge is tapered and smooth with the horse, I can't tell a difference, but I think that extra 1" of bar width will let me rope something bigger with less chance of damage to my gear or person. This is all based on a tapering seat down the sides too, not the 2 full layers to the bottom bar edge ground seat.

Other factors obviously play into how these bars will fit besides type of activity and conformation. David mentioned farriers, dentists, bitting, the rider, where they ride - hills or flat. The owners can control a bunch of saddle fit with the feed program, conditioning program, saddle pads, and just plain how they ride. As makers we influence it with rigging postion and type, getting these riggings on evenly, and making a seat our rider can sit in to be in balance with the horse (and right on the cantle generally ain't it). That is getting to the top of the saddle, and I don't want to go there yet.

We have factories and one man shops making trees and saddles. We are competing with saddles sold by unknowing catalog and tackstore employees to mostly unknowing customers (both judging the top of the saddle) to put on an animal that can't talk. If he gets sore, they put another saddle on, it may not fit better but is different enough to rest that sore spot and create another one somewhere else. I would really like to see some data from standardized testing of different trees with real-time pressure cell pads during different activities. I look forward to the day of standards, but don't see that happening in my lifetime, and I am not old. In the meantime, I want to have as much information as I can to do the best job I can. I think it starts with the bottom of the tree. Hope this sparks something

Bruce Johnson

Lets try this again ...... and everybody check their guns at the door!!!!

[bruce johnson]

Thanks Blake,

Kind of where I would like to see this go is discussing the different names of bar patterns and some of the differences. I have a handout from a tree maker about some of these styles of bars, but without their permission to post, don't feel right just doing it. Also has Rod and Denise have mentioned, every tree maker does things just a little bit differently.

The names I have heard (and used some of) include:

1. Arizona

2. Wade

3. Northwest

4. PW bars

5. Tidwell

6 Rainmaker

7. Mule bars ( a subset probably of the above).

8. Hape bars

The explained differences usually revolve around Twist and rocker. Arizona style bars (one stirrup slot vs. two) can be done on most of the other "non AZ" bars.

Choices of wood - poplar, cottonwood, etc. are favored for different reasons by different tree makers. Obviously not everyone uses the same wood. Advantages/Disadvantages?

The tradeoff of bar thickness vs. strength, what about bar width?

Tapered thin bar edges or thicker rounded edges?

Shape of the bottom side - rounded or flattened pads?

Finally, how do we measure? wires and tracings, where at? how many? Thermoplastic pads? fitting shells?

Bruce Johnson

Edited May 8, 2007 by bruce johnson

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

I don't know how long it took for Bruce to write his post, but this one has been on the go for a few days, and this is just part one in answering some of his questions. Lots of good questions and food for thought, and lots to learn by listening to others. Here is our current opinion, as tree makers, on the questions Bruce asked. We would invite (respectful) feedback, comments and questions on our ideas. All we can do is learn more.

"Nothing is written in granite" should be the underlying theme when discussing trees, especially bars. We are trying our best to fit a solid object (unless you go with the flexible bar theory, which would be a whole different thread) on a softish, movable one. There will be no one "right" answer to the questions asked here.

"How far from a great fit is no fit?" Our answer would be "A long way". "No fit" is one that hurts the horse. A great fit is harder, because what moment in time are you trying to fit the best? If you set a bare tree on a horse when he is standing still, you can see where it contacts him at that point. If you set it there and watch while he walks around, you will see that there is a lot of movement of the muscles of his back under the tree. There are times when the back will fall away from the tree so it isn't even touching at the back end of the bar and then the middle. As he turns the outside has less contact in places while the inside has more. The area where the bar fits into the wither pocket seems to be the only area that never loses contact between the tree and the horse. With weight on the saddle, you won't get as dramatic a visual difference, but the same factors are at play - the muscles will be having an increasing and decreasing amount of pressure with every movement and every phase of every stride. This is why we can "get away with" so much. There is rarely a constant enough area of high pressure anywhere under the tree to cause problems unless something is really wrong ("no fit"). The areas this constant pressure is most likely - the wither pocket and the back bar tips - are the areas we tend to see more problems.

Bruce writes "Obviously some (tree makers) make bar patterns and have geometries that are different from others." I would change that slightly to say all are different. Even makers that learned from the same teachers modify and change things and think for themselves. Bottom line is that you cannot compare trees between makers based just on numbers and measurements. You have to see one from that maker and try in on horses. Then you will know what you want different next time. And you don't always have to change makers to get something different. If you ask, they often make them in the various permutations and combinations you want, but trying to explain all those options to you at one time is often too complicated to be practical for a first order, unless the saddle maker asks. Bottom line, once you know how one fits, talk to the tree maker. He can often make the changes you want for another tree.

Bruce talks about the amount of "roundness" in the shape of the underside of the front bar pads - a very important factor which should match the shape of the horse. Some horses are A shaped with the sides of that A being concave. They hold a saddle in place the best, and need a rounder bar pad. Some are A shaped with the sides of the A being flat, and they need a flatter bar pad. Some horses bulge outward from either fat or muscle and that makes a difference in fit too. The problem with this "roundness" is that there is no number or measurement that can be used to describe it to someone who hasn't seen one of that maker's trees before. So for a first time order, the best you can do is describe the type (style) of horse you are trying to fit, to send back drawings, photos, molds, or whatever the tree maker asks for, and trust the tree maker to send his best shape to fit that type. Some tree makers make different shapes while maybe some offer only the one they feel fits the most horses. The method and equipment used to make the bars affects the ability to make different shapes a lot and plays a huge factor in what options are available. But basically you have to see one first, and then ask for changes if needed. (Sorry about that, but it's the truth.)

"Hand hole vs. gullet width"? While repeating the statement, "you can't compare between makers", I would say that probably the most consistent thing that you could try to compare between makers would be the hand hole width. It always means that the inside edges of the bars will be the same distance apart. (Just check if that maker's numbers are in the wood or in the rawhide, which makes a difference.) If you just use gullet width, the inside edges of the bars can easily vary in their distance apart for two reasons - stock thickness (thickness of the fork front to back) and the way the bar tip is shaped. That being said, a maker may adjust for those factors so that gullet width can be used to compare between that maker's own trees. It does not compare well between makers. So order by what that maker uses as his standard to set bar width. He may or may not (the practical geometry gets very complicated) be able or willing to use the other measurement.

"Should we specify both hand hole and gullet width and the bar spread along the bottom?" Our answer would be "No, please don't do that to us!" As I said before, the geometry gets complicated, but basically you are talking about a quadrangle with the hand hole (or gullet) width determining how wide the top line is, the two bars sloping outward forming the sides, and the bar spread along the bottom forming the bottom. Any and all of these sides and angles can be adjusted in different ways (but necesssarily evenly side to side!) There are two factors that are not mentioned here that affect the spread along the bottom of the bar (and where and how does everyone like to measure that?) compared to the hand hole or gullet width: 1.) The angle at which the bars are placed (discussed later) and 2.) The depth (or width) of the actual bar, which I rarely hear discussed. That would have to be measured in a way that is precisely the same on all the trees but everything is so rounded and shaped by the time the bar depth is determined that I have yet to find a consistent place to measure it that would be useable to compare between makers. Does anyone do this regularly? What is your preferable way to measure bar depth? We can tell you what the spread at the bottom of our bars is at various places along the bar based on the hand hole width, bar angle and bar type (which determines the depth or width of the actual bar) on our trees. But to try and make that fit some arbitrary numbers given to us based on someone else's trees - practically that is a no go. There are enough other differences between maker's trees that you wouldn't get the same fit anyway, even if you did want to pay us for the time and effort it would take to get it figured out (and even IF - that's a big if, by the way - we were willing to do so). Maybe math PhDs and computer programmers can do it a lot easier, but that's not us. All that being said, the bar spread at the bottom is another measurement that may be very helpful in comparing trees - within one maker's styles, depending on other factors. Between makers - different story.

Arizona bars - our take is that we have decided that we won't make them. They may or may not cause problems depending on the way they are made and how well the rock in the bar fits the rock in the horse's back. But we are comfortable enough with the strength of the materials in our trees that we are not worried about breakage at the stirrup groove, so we see no necessity to remove that back stirrup groove - in our trees. Our main reason for not making them is that however they are made, we feel that you compromise fit. You either have a stirrup leather lump under the bar against the horse, or you lose bar surface area behind the stirrup where the bar is hollowed out a bit to avoid problem number one. Remember, please - "Every tree maker does things differently." In another thread Blake said that he would go with Arizona bars in arena or hard roping ranch horses, depending on the event. I am curious as to why. Is it a strength factor or is there something about the fit that you feel works better in those events?

I am not quite clear on how arbitrarily narrowing the width of the cantle gullet would account for twist. Bruce, are you talking about what David Genadek calls orientation? Downhill horses are the bane of a tree (and saddle) maker's existence. They fall into the category of horses that are not properly built to carry a saddle. So how do we deal with the problem? I see fixes at three levels. 1.) The best one is the horse - breed them level!!! But quarter horses are often sold on the basis of their "big butts", according to the ads anyway, and a butt looks bigger if it is taller than the front of the horse, so that is still how they are being bred. Hopefully we are close to the end of the pendulum swing and we will see more level horses in the coming years. (To encourage this, might I suggest getting the owner to ride in a normal, flat seated saddle for a fair distance - long enough that they get so tired of sliding into the fork that they decide to geld the stud or spay the mare? But no, that wouldn't be fair to the horse.) 2.) The tree. My best understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is that David works on this problem by spreading the back of the bars further apart than the front of the bars so the back will sit down lower compared to the front. I can see how this would work well if you also changed the shape of the bar and the angle of the back of the bar (by altering the twist) to fit the horse further out from the spinal column. To just spread the bars as is wouldn't work well. But how far out to spread would be dependant on how downhill the horse was, and every different amount of spread would require different shape and angle. If that is what David is able to do, good for him. But it would be technically very difficult, and for some severely downhill horses, it just wouldn't be possible to reach the ideal. You would run out of practical width of horse before you run out of downhill!! (Unfortunately, I sometimes see horses this severe advertised with stud fees attached. Ouch.) 3.) The ground seat. You fit the tree so it fits the shape of the horse's back as if it were level, and then build the ground seat higher in the front to level out the seat. Then the weight of the rider wouldn't be pushing the saddle down the hill so much. This is very possible for a custom saddle maker to do, especially since he has a greater chance of seeing the horses on which the saddle will be used than the tree maker does, and can make the ground seat accordingly.

How wide or narrow should the channel between the bars be (at the back I am assuming)? Good question. A channel can be too narrow so that it puts too much pressure too close to the bones of the spine. But how wide is too wide? One difficulty of having a wide channel comes for the saddle maker in putting in a ground seat to cover the wider distance - more of a problem for leather ground seats versus tin. A second disadvantage is that the further apart the bars go, the higher the cantle gullet needs to be to clear the spine. This can be a problem for a short cantle. You may not have enough wood left between the top of the cantle gullet and the top of the cantle for strength. Another difficulty is trying to make a narrow seat on a wider tree. If you spread the back of the bars apart, you will make the tree wider. Even if you change the angle to match the steeper angle on the horse's side further away from the spine, it will still be wider unless you narrow the depth of the bar, which decreases surface area. Balancing all these factors fits into the "Every tree maker does things differently" category.

Bar angles. We hadn't heard yet that 93 degrees was now "celebrated". (Maybe it takes a while for the news to travel north.) A few years ago the word in some places was that it was "bad, bad, bad". But no one angle is right for all horses any more than one width or one shape is. And wrong angles probably cause more problems than wrong widths. The real truth is the numbers actually don't mean much when comparing between makers. Honest. Within every maker's trees, a 93 degree will be wider at the bottom for the same hand hole (or gullet) width than a 90 degree. But you can't compare one maker's 90 degree with another maker's and expect them to fit the same for a number of reasons too complicated to go into right now. (There is another information article that has been floating around in my head for about 2-3 years on that topic. Maybe it is getting ready to be written sometime soon.) Again, as a saddle maker, the bottom line is that you need to get one tree from a maker and see how it fits. Then talk with the tree maker about how you would like to adjust things for other. Chances are, they can do it, or they have their reasons why they can't or won't. Communicate. It's worth it.

Enough for now. My brain hurts. And I see that as I am agonizing over how to make myself clear, Bruce is asking questions faster than I can give my opinion on them. There's lots to discuss, isn't there? But this is our two cents worth, for whatever two cents is worth today. (Just to be perfectly clear, while I (Denise) actually type the stuff, Rod has his say on the content. We work together on things. It's more fun that way!!)

[dsenette]

good info guys (and gals maybe?) i know squat about saddles...or at least i did before reading this (and the other two threads here in the saddle forum that i've read) i know know (sort of) what you're talking about when you say "trees" (and here i thought they were just for climbing and getting apples out of) and having to google some of the other terms you guys are using has forced me to learn even more things....good info guys (and gals if there are any)...i think this will turn out to be a great resource for saddle makers and people just wondering about the "hows" and "whys" of all this stuff

[bruce johnson]

Denise and Rod (now that I know what order to give credit to for writing that great reply), Thank you again for your participation. It took me about an hour to write that post. It has taken at least 10 years to think about it. It seems like whenever two saddlemakers get together, two questions always come up. First is "What tannery's skirting do you use?". The second question is always "Whose trees do you use?".

I am sorry I posted the reply above with even more questions before you had a chance to reply to the first. LOL. Pretty much all of your reply is self-explanatory and well written. Just for clarification on one point, the 93 degree bars being celebrated was kind of tongue in cheek. Some of the equine clinicians have been touting the 93 degree bars for their endorsed saddles or saddlemaker. While they do have a place, the average clinic attendee comes home and wants to have them arbitrarily. Kind of like Ray Hunt, some would say, introduced the Wade saddle to the masses. No slam against Ray before we go there. His first wife Millie and my mother-in-law were fast friends. I have one of the first copies of his book inscribed to her.

I am looking forward to further replies, and really want you to know that I for one, appreciate all the time and effort you have put into this.

Bruce Johnson

[Blake]

maker does things differently." In another thread Blake said that he would go with Arizona bars in arena or hard roping ranch horses, depending on the event. I am curious as to why. Is it a strength factor or is there something about the fit that you feel works better in those events?

Hi Denise

That is a great question. It is what the customer wants and orders. I am not a big fan of the Arizona bar and it won't be found in any of my personal saddles.

The customer usually specifies the Ariz. bar along with a full double rigging. They feel that the saddle becomes more stable that way and the bars less likely to break.

A few well known saddle makers in the roping circles have established that bar and it is difficult to promote change.

What would you suggest? I am really open to this discussion and have great respect for the job that you and Rod do and your willingness to share your knowledge.

Kind Regards

Blake

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Blake, regarding the ubiquitous use of Arizona bars in roping circles:

It is hard to change how people think, but a question is "Why do they think the way they think, and do they know why they think the way they think?" Do they know what makes an Arizona bar an Arizona bar other than "this is a good bar for a roping saddle"? Some people won't change their minds for anything, but there are others who are open to reasonable explanations. It just takes time to educate them.

We often have had to explain to people what an Arizona bar is. Even some saddle makers who call us don't know that an Arizona bar doesn't have a back stirrup groove, so your customers might not either. We have asked a number of people who know nothing about trees if they see a problem with putting a piece of leather under a bar, making a groove for it at the front but not the back, and then sitting on the tree when it is on a horse's back. Their response is generally, "Won't that make a lump at the back of that leather that will hurt him?" It is often obvious to someone who doesn't know that this is supposed to be a good thing, but hard to see by someone who has been told that it is.

We have good pictures of the upper side of a set of skirts and the under side of a bar that had an Arizona bar tree in it, which I have attached below. You can see the area of pressure under the stirrup leather, and how it gets deeper towards the back. Then you see the area of total lack of pressure behind the stirrup groove for a bit, and the pressure gradually building back up again. If you get the chance to get some of your own pictures (or use the ones below, if I figure out how to attach them), it will let people see that what you are telling them is true. By the way, this saddle came to a friend's shop because the tree was broken - right where the back stirrup groove would have been if it had had one.

Then we explain to people that the original reason for an Arizona bar was because of breakage at the back of the stirrup groove - the weakest place on the tree. Taking away the back groove left more thickness to the bar and so increased the strength. But there are other ways to make it strong - better wood, better rawhide, greater bar width. Show or tell them about the difference between a poorer quality tree without a stirrup groove and a better quality tree with one. This often is enough to convince them. (Of course, if a saddle maker is using trees that have thin pine bars with thin rawhide on them, the likelihood of breakage is still fairly high.)

If you can get a couple of good ropers in your area using non-Arizona bars in their saddle, word of mouth may gradually change the ideas. But some people just won't change their mind. Making Arizona bars is the one major thing that we have decided we won't do because of the compromise we see in fit as a result. Fortunately, I don't think we have ever had anybody decide not to use us as a tree maker because we won't build them. If so, we haven't missed them. But I realize some saddle makers don't have the luxury of enough work to say no. (An elderly, very well respected saddle maker up here has a kind way of saying it: "I think another saddle maker would suit your needs better." He is one who has had the luxury of saying no for many of years.)

As far as the full double rigging goes, if they are still listening to you at this point, they may be thinking that you know what you are talking about and be willing to listen to your opinions there too. Some people will listen to you, and some people could learn a lot if they didn't already know so much.

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Bruce said "It has taken at least 10 years to think about it." Yup, sounds about right here too. (Well, maybe 11 ½ years since Rod started building.) I would also like to say here that making something to fit a specific horse is generally not a good idea. When we get back drawings, etc. of horses, they almost always fall within our normal parameters. We have only made two trees that were distinctly different from the "normal" (though we have one breed that is unusual that we make for.) In both cases, the owners were warned up, down and sideways that this tree would NOT fit a normal horse well and the owners were adamant that it didn't matter. They wanted a saddle for this horse and couldn't fit it any other way than having a tree made for it. For these two horses, they were right, and they had the finances to get a saddle for that horse. So we give people the information and let them make their choice. Most choose no. These two chose yes. So now, continuing on from where we left off¦

Rock: This is the part of the shape of the horse's back that can probably change the most. The rib cage can only expand so far as the horse takes a deep breath, so the angle and width of the bars don't change much for a horse once it is fully mature. Weight gain and loss can change wither pocket filling, but the underlying structure of the horse is the same. But how rounded or sunken a horse's back is can change dramatically depending on his age, how he holds himself at any particular time, and how he is trained and ridden. If he is "all strung out" the back will be hollow. If he is in full collection, his back will be rounder than when he is running freely. It is more difficult once you have a rider. You also have to take into account their weight, which causes downward pressure on the horizontal spine, possibly making it sag a bit. So there is a lot of discussion about what happens if you mount a horse and ask him to round up. We have an article where they checked out three makers of the high-tech type of devices that try to check out the pressure under a saddle. One said that a horse could round further under the weight of a rider compared to a standing back (the saddle would have more pressure under the middle), and two said it couldn't. It is obvious when a horse "sticks his tail in the ground" for a really hard stop on his hindquarters that the back of the saddle lifts off. He is very rounded for that very short period of time. If a horse is being ridden by someone who is asking for some degree of collection most of the time, his muscles will get trained to hold himself that way, and he may need less rock that he did before training. If a horse is ridden in such a way that his back is always hollow, his muscles will get trained to hold himself that way too, and bridging will be more of a concern. So what's a tree (and saddle) maker to do? Knowing a bit about the discipline the horse is being trained and used for may help a bit. Dude horses will not be moving in collection most of the time. (They also don't get custom saddles) Reining horses may be asked to stay collected a lot. We think the best guess is still to fit the standing horse (make sure he is standing square) and you probably won't be that far off when the horse is moving. And remember, because the horse is moving, we have quite a bit of leeway unless we are doing something really wrong.

We fall on the "better have too much than not enough rock" side of the fence, if we have to pick a side. We think there are more horses with sore loins from bridging saddles than horses sore under the middle of the bar from too much rock (possible Arizona bar induced problems aside).

How do we measure it to tell a tree maker? Answer - you really can't give a numerical measurement. There just isn't such a thing. A while ago there was someone who tried to make something that would give you a numerical evaluation of a horse's back, and it mainly dealt with rock. He had a gauge on the market that you would set on a horse You would maneuver the center "spine" of the device to match the topline of the horse, and then set a number of wings that extended sideways at angles to match the horse. You could determine the angles of all the joints and if both the tree maker and the person at the horse had the same system, you would give the numbers to the tree maker, he would set his device the same way and he could then see the shape. I couldn't find their website today, so I don't know if that is still available. It sounded like a good idea, but the limitations were the cost of the device, and the fact that the numbers only applied to the device, so you had to have one to know what it meant.

There are a number of products available to make a mold of a horse's back which you can send to the tree maker, and they are helpful. Just make sure it is big enough for a western saddle. A lot are made for English saddles and just aren't long enough to show you everything you need to see.

The thing that we have come to realize over the years is that the topline of the horse (which is set by how high the spines of the vertebrae are) doesn't always correlate with the amount of rock needed under the bar, which is sitting on the muscles overlying the rib cage. The rock in the bar extends from front bar tip to back bar tip, and where that sits on the horse is where you need to be looking to determine how much rock a horse needs, not the topline. This is why if we have back drawings sent to us, we have them draw at least three places across the back - in the middle of the wither pocket, across the stirrup groove area, and about the center of the back bar pad. A fourth line across the withers where the gullet lip would sit is also needed if tall withers are a concern. Then we get them to draw the topline and mark on it where the other lines cross it. Knowing what is truly horizontal by using a level on the back and transferring that to the drawing is helpful in knowing how "downhill" a horse is. If they do this, make sure the ground under the horse is level first! We also ask people to send us "side lines" from where the bar will actually be resting, from bar tip to bar tip, and extended forward over the shoulder. We ask them to mark on this "side line" where the lines across the back cross it. We feel this gives us the best representation of the shape we are trying to match.

Pictures are also helpful, but can be deceiving based on lighting, etc. It really helps if people put masking tape on their horse first where they are going to take the back drawings, and then take pictures with the tape still on. Four views are good: from the side, the back, and angled from both front and back. We find that the tape really helps us see the shape of the back better, especially the "side lines".

Bottom line, though, is the same old story. You have to see a tree from that maker and try it on horses to see how it fits. Then you know what you may want different for another tree. They know what they did to make it, so they can figure out how to change it to be the way you want it.

Bar thickness and its relationship to shape: Having a thicker bar does keep you a little bit further off your horse, but that extra ¼" in thickness isn't a mile, and we see the advantages of thicker bars in a number of areas. So having thin bars just isn't a goal we aim for since we don't see a huge benefit in it.

The disadvantage of thicker bars is that may they take more work to block the skirts. A thin bar is often narrower at the edges, making blocking skirts easier, but a thicker bar can also be made to have thinner edges to improve the ease of blocking the skirts.

One big disadvantage of thinner bars is strength. The thinner the wood, the weaker it is, obviously. So thickness adds strength. (So does thicker rawhide, which is probably more important where strength is a major concern.) If the wood is thicker, it doesn't have to be as wide for the same strength, and that will help in building a narrower seat.

Another disadvantage to thin bars is that it limits the amount of "relief" you can give to the edge of a bar. We use the term relief to describe the rounding off of the edge of the bottom of the bar so that it doesn't dig into the horse. You want relief at the bar edge, especially at the back bar tip. (When a bar tree is placed on a horse, we like to see the back bar tip come off the back. If it touches when unweighted, it will dig in with weight on it.) You don't want the edge to dig in anywhere. How much it might dig in depends on the shape of the horse and the over all shape of the bottom of the bar. For horses that are very muscular and whose back muscles bulge up from the spinal column and out from the wither pocket, this isn't a problem. You are fitting something that is the shape of a (slightly flattened) ball anyway, so the muscle will fall away from the bar edge anyway. You don't have to make it do that. (These are horses where you want an overall flatter shape to the bottom of the bar.) But for horses whose muscles are very flat, you want to gradually lift the bar edges away from that muscle so they don't stick in and hurt the horse, and that is where the relief comes in. (These are horses where you want a more rounded shape to the bottom off the bar overall.) If the bar is very thin, you can't build in much relief. If it is thicker, you can build in more.

Flare is, in essence, extensive relief that starts further away from the edge and rises enough that it affects how you make the top of the bar as well, or else you would run out of thickness of wood before you got to the edge. The thinner the bar, the more the bar has to be "flared" to give the same amount of relief as you could with a thicker bar. The aim is to give surface area on the top of the bar for the saddle maker to use, but limit contact of the underside of the bar on the horse where it may interfere with his movements. If the bar is thick enough to provide a well rounded edge, the only area we see where interference may be a concern is at the shoulder. So long as the tree has enough rock, we haven't seen a need to flare the outside edge of the back bar pad. Maybe that is because of the relief we can build in.

As Bruce's question implies, you are losing contact area in the flared section in order to avoid possible interference with the horse. We think the more surface area you have on the horse the better until you get to the point of interference. Where is that point? It varies with how the horse is built (how flat the shoulders, how far back they extend, how far he rotates them back, etc.), the discipline he is used for and the way he is trained. A gaited show horse that is being marked on the flashiness of its leg movement is asked to move its shoulders a lot and will need less possibility of interference than a ranch horse that is being roped off all day. But the ranch horse sure appreciates the extra surface area over which to distribute the pressure of that cow hitting the end of the rope, even if you dally.

The idea of bar width (or depth) fits in here too. The wider the bar, the greater the surface area. But if it is "flared away" a lot it isn't contacting the horse, effectively making it a narrower bar. We don't see much point in having bar surface where it isn't contacting the horse as long as the saddle maker has enough to work with on the top. So if shoulder interference might to be a problem, our solution is to cut back the length of the bar tip so it doesn't extend forward over the shoulder, and with a thicker bar we can round the edge more than we could with a thinner bar, which helps with the full shoulder extension phase.

A deeper (wider) bar increases the surface area on the horse to distribute the pressure better. This is the idea with Wade bars. They are wider than the others (comparing within the maker's bar styles and not between makers) because they were designed as ranch work saddles. But what about the "waist" area? If you are riding broad backed Quarter Horses, your knees will be further apart than if you are riding Thoroughbreds, no matter what the seat is like. All bars are narrowed where the rider's leg goes, and the narrower the middle, the easier it is for the saddle maker to make a narrow seat, but the less surface area there is on the horse, and the weaker the bar is. It is another one of those balancing acts. A good saddle maker can make a good seat in any tree. It is just a bit harder in some than in others (and that difficulty may have nothing to do with the width). And a poor saddle maker can make a bad seat in the best tree. So while having a "narrow waist" is nice, it isn't as important as the skill of the saddle maker in building the seat.

As to the different wood used to make bars, there are three factors I can think of now that affect the choice of wood. The first is a very practical one - availability, especially in the size you need. It might be your first choice of wood for bars, but if you can't get it, you don't use it. The second factor would be properties of the wood. Strength is a hard thing to determine, because there are so many facets to it. Is a wood stronger because it takes more PSI to make it snap (like a hardwood such as maple) or because it can bend more before breaking (like fir)? Some woods break easily across the grain, but don't split lengthwise. Others are the opposite. Some may take more constant pressure before they break, but are more apt to split when tacks are hammered in. Screw holding ability also is a factor. The number of defects in the wood and the ease of cutting around them is a factor. And workability is a big one. The harder the wood, the harder it is to cut and shape. Some of the "old masters" could make a drawknife sing, but they used mainly pine in their trees. With the advent of carving discs, etc. the use of harder woods is now an option that they didn't have available to them with their tools. And let's face it, cost comes into play a bit too. If we are happy with either of two options, the lower priced one will be purchased.

We like yellow poplar for the bars. It is available in a 2" thickness, and we have a supplier that lets us pick through a couple of lifts if need be to get the boards we want. While it is heavier than pine, it is about the same weight as fir (which we can't get easily), but it is substantially stronger. It is very difficult to break, and then it splits lengthwise, not across the grain. The charts say this is so, and in our own "torture tests" we have proved it to be true. We use several layers of 1" hardwood in the center of our wood post horn forks and a piece of 2" hardwood in our metal horn forks. Price determines that this is usually maple. We also like birch, and have used ash. We tried oak, but it can crack too easily for our liking. The cantle and the rest of the fork are made of aspen poplar. We can get kiln dried wood closer to home than the other woods. There are fewer knots and less gumminess than with pine. And the price is OK too. So those are our choices for now.

I think that does it for this time. Again, please remember that every tree maker does things, and thinks about things, differently. These are just our ideas at this stage in our life.

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Still trying to figure out this picture thing. I am trying to put up the picture to go with the Arizona bars post responding to Blake. Here goes.

[bruce johnson]

Denise and Rod,

When I started these questions they were mostly intended to be rhetorical, and I really didn't expect to get answers so easily. I expected a few saddlemakers saying "this works for me, this is just the way my treemaker(s) do it, etc., never thought about I just call up and order a 6-1/2 " gullet", etc. I really appreciate your responses, experience, and opinions. For you relief, I don't think I have any more questions off the top of my head. Thank you doesn't seem like enough and I can't find the right smiley thing, so here's a hearty handshake and slap on the back.

Bruce Johnson

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Glad if we can help in some way. Sometimes the hardest thing to figure out is what question to ask. Often by the time we know the right question, we know most of the possible answers too. But some people who call us don't have a lot of knowledge yet, and as you said on another thread, there isn't a lot of information from tree makers out there. We figured that if this part of the forum is here to help people learn about saddles, maybe we can give our opinion on some things about trees that we have learned by our experience. We sure don't claim to know everything, and so many aspects of trees have no one "right" answer. Other people like doing things different ways for different reasons. I am rather curious as to what others think and why.

I like the idea of breaking the tree into segments - for discussion purposes only of course! - and learning what others think and like. So much of the top of the tree is just personal preference so I am curious about what will come out of that. But let's stay with Bars and Bottoms for a while. We've had our say now. We really would like to hear what others have to say about it.

[David Genadek]

Saddle making is a journey that can take you down many roads that lead to many worlds. You can choose to stay in one world or bop around to your hearts content. For those of us who have done a lot bopping around, there are similarities amongst all the worlds and those similarities are based on the anatomy and biomechanics of how the horse moves. These do not change everything else is mans interpretatition of those physical realities.

Since the beginning of horsemanship there have been two main interpretations of those physical realities. Brida and Jineta. In Brida the horse is thought to move forward by going forward. The equipment often takes advantage of leverage to force the horse into a frame. In Jineta the belief is that the horse goes forward by going backward. The equipment in this world is about communication and getting the horse to engage the hindquarter to create lightness in the front end. This is in fact how it works but it is counter intuitive and some find the concept hard to grasp. As the battle of these two seats progressed the Brida world did some compromising and a third seat emerged called a la Bastarda or Estradiota. This is the seat you will often see in the show ring today. Anyone building saddles should understand this history as it affects everything you do . Conquerors by Deb Bennett PhD is the best source of information I have found on the subject. Here is a link to her bookstore. On that page you will also find a back issue of her Inner horseman on Saddle fit. In this she has some diagrams that she originally did for me to help me get clear on what is happening anatomy wise. These diagrams are spectacular ! I would recommend both these resources for any one that is serious about understanding saddle function.

In my world I never loose track of the Jineta vs Brida perspective because it helps me find perspective when the opinions begin to fly. For instance in my world horses don’t have pockets behind their shoulders and there is never concave musculature along the back if there is we put the horse into rehabilitation. When I hear people speaking about placing the tree in the pockets I understand that the notion began with jousting saddles which had two large arches whose purpose was to dig in to the horses back to stabilize the saddle . As much as I respect that you all have a right to live in that world I no longer do, I once did.

Understanding Jineta and Brida can help you bring clarity to your customer’s requests. Through out these threads there have been many references to getting the rider closer to the horse by thinning the bars down. I used to have a shop in River Falls WI, which at the time was a hot bed for the reining horse world. The rieners kept coming I saying they want a deep seat I want close contact . So I did what they told me to do. Seat after seat I would go closer and closer to setting them on the spine. They would never quite be happy with the seats. I finally got disgusted and did exactly opposite of what they told me to do and then they said “Wow now that is a deep seat !†What they wanted was a classic Jineta seat but they didn’t know what that was and they certainly didn’t know how to tell me to build it. In addition, this confusion also creates others like needing to scallop the skirt in the center and the narrowing of the center of the bar. After that I realized I had a lot to learn and I shouldn’t be learning it from confused customers. In my world I can make the top of the bar extremely thick and it actually helps my groundwork shape. I can also maintain a greater width the entire length of the bar, which helps distribute the weight to a part of the anatomy that can handle it.

Rod was correct in his assessment of the complexity of the bar geometries. The shapes I use would be very difficult to achieve with traditional duplicating methods used by the industry. However today we have a new world with the advancements in NURBS mathmatics that allow computers to generate free form shapes with out the constraints of the parametrics that were needed in traditional CAD programs. Programs like Rhino 3d are reshaping how products are designed. Rapid Prototyping is developing at light speed and before long it won’t be out of the question for each saddle maker to have a computerized router in his shop that can cut his own tree parts complete with indexing so the tree has to be square.

These technological changes bring new opportunities to the custom maker but these opportunities are not with out challenge. I started my company 14 years ago with Dan Crates, we were a skunk works, for Crates Leather Company. As a smaller more nimble company we were free to innovate and test concepts before they were put in to the traditional production setting. Dan was trained by FO Baird and is one of the most knowledgeable saddle makers I have ever met. Dan Crates has a passion for traditional saddle making and design, which he tries his best to build into his production line. Unfortunately as we progressed it quickly became clear that Crates does not sell to the end user, they sell to the retailer. Therefore their product lines have to conform to the retailer’s perception in order to fit in and be successful in that market. Although the types of innovation I am speaking of do make a saddle more production capable they do not fit into the current mindset of the retail store. Retail stores are about moving product they are not about teaching and helping their customers become better horseman . This in my mind is the greatest advantage the custom maker has over the factory saddles. As a rule most people can’t tell the difference between hand carving and something that was done with a plate. So in all actuality our greatest advantage is our knowledge of equine anatomy and biomechanics. If the trees we use offer no advantage other than a better wood and nicer stitching on the rawhide as a rule the customer won’t much care because they are looking for benefits to their horsemanship. Bottom line is the custom maker can’t compete on price he has to compete with superior knowledge and this is the real challenge.

Tree makers are in the business to build trees the way the saddle maker requests. I had a wonderful conversation with Francis Bowden where he shared with me some of his frustrations with things that saddle makers were requesting. From his perspective his job is to make the tree the way the saddle maker requested. They are after all on the front line and should know. Since they are paying him to make the tree he is obligated to create what they want even when he knows it to be wrong. The problem is we saddle makers put the power of design in the hands of amature horse people or half baked trainers looking for this weeks gimmick to give them selves the edge. As I read what Rod has been writing I see bits of every world I have been in this industry. He is doing exactly what he should be doing which is building the trees the way saddle makers have requested. My hope is that saddle makers can begin to take a greater interest in anatomy and biomechanics so that they could begin to develop common ground based on the physical facts.

David Genadek

[David Genadek]

Here is a link to my version of a back tracing. We do a few things different. One we place the topeline on a level line so we can get an understanding of the horses orientation. Two we have choosen three easy to identify key anatomical points as a referance. The high part to the whither the base of the whither and the last rib. This allows us to do a comparitive study between a multitude of horses that I hope will some day allow us to identify standard ribcage shapes. Capturing the whole whither shape is important in my way of doing things as I place the saddle much further forward which puts it in an area of the horses body that is best designed to carry the wieght. This is also why twist is more important to me than it might be to others.

I do not capture the second horizontal section because it has already been captured in the rib cross sections. I want to aviod capturing a moment in time. Instead my goal is to capture the horse's ribcage shape as it is meant to be.

David Genadek

Bruce said "It has taken at least 10 years to think about it." Yup, sounds about right here too. (Well, maybe 11 ½ years since Rod started building.) I would also like to say here that making something to fit a specific horse is generally not a good idea. When we get back drawings, etc. of horses, they almost always fall within our normal parameters. We have only made two trees that were distinctly different from the "normal" (though we have one breed that is unusual that we make for.) In both cases, the owners were warned up, down and sideways that this tree would NOT fit a normal horse well and the owners were adamant that it didn't matter. They wanted a saddle for this horse and couldn't fit it any other way than having a tree made for it. For these two horses, they were right, and they had the finances to get a saddle for that horse. So we give people the information and let them make their choice. Most choose no. These two chose yes. So now, continuing on from where we left off…

Rock: This is the part of the shape of the horse's back that can probably change the most. The rib cage can only expand so far as the horse takes a deep breath, so the angle and width of the bars don't change much for a horse once it is fully mature. Weight gain and loss can change wither pocket filling, but the underlying structure of the horse is the same. But how rounded or sunken a horse's back is can change dramatically depending on his age, how he holds himself at any particular time, and how he is trained and ridden. If he is "all strung out" the back will be hollow. If he is in full collection, his back will be markedly rounder when he is running freely. It is more difficult once you have a rider. You also have to take into account their weight, which causes downward pressure on the horizontal spine, possibly making it sag a bit. So there is a lot of discussion about what happens if you mount a horse and ask him to round up. We have an article where they checked out three makers of the high-tech type of devices that try to check out the pressure under a saddle. One said that a horse could round further under the weight of a rider compared to a standing back (the saddle would have more pressure under the middle), and two said it couldn't. It is obvious when a horse "sticks his tail in the ground" for a really hard stop on his hindquarters that the back of the saddle lifts off. He is very rounded for that very short period of time. If a horse is being ridden by someone who is asking for some degree of collection most of the time, his muscles will get trained to hold himself that way, and he may need less rock that he did before training. If a horse is ridden in such a way that his back is always hollow, his muscles will get trained to hold himself that way too, and bridging will be more of a concern. So what's a tree (and saddle) maker to do? Knowing a bit about the discipline the horse is being trained and used for may help a bit. Dude horses will not be moving in collection most of the time. (They also don't get custom saddles) Reining horses may be asked to stay collected a lot. We think the best guess is still to fit the standing horse (make sure he is standing square) and you probably won't be that far off when the horse is moving. And remember, because the horse is moving, we have quite a bit of leeway unless we are doing something really wrong.

We fall on the "better have too much than not enough rock" side of the fence, if we have to pick a side. We think there are more horses with sore loins from bridging saddles than horses sore under the middle of the bar from too much rock (possible Arizona bar induced problems aside).

How do we measure it to tell a tree maker? Answer – you really can't give a numerical measurement. There just isn't such a thing. A while ago there was someone who tried to make something that would give you a numerical evaluation of a horse's back, and it mainly dealt with rock. He had a gauge on the market that you would set on a horse You would maneuver the center "spine" of the device to match the topline of the horse, and then set a number of wings that extended sideways at angles to match the horse. You could determine the angles of all the joints and if both the tree maker and the person at the horse had the same system, you would give the numbers to the tree maker, he would set his device the same way and he could then see the shape. I couldn't find their website today, so I don't know if that is still available. It sounded like a good idea, but the limitations were the cost of the device, and the fact that the numbers only applied to the device, so you had to have one to know what it meant.

There are a number of products available to make a mold of a horse's back which you can send to the tree maker, and they are helpful. Just make sure it is big enough for a western saddle. A lot are made for English saddles and just aren't long enough to show you everything you need to see.

The thing that we have come to realize over the years is that the topline of the horse (which is set by how high the spines of the vertebrae are) doesn't always correlate with the amount of rock needed under the bar, which is sitting on the muscles overlying the rib cage. The "rock" in the bar extends from front bar tip to back bar tip, and where that sits on the horse is where you need to be looking to determine how much rock a horse needs, not the topline. This is why if we have back drawings sent to us, we have them draw at least three places across the back – in the middle of the wither pocket, across the stirrup groove area, and about the center of the back bar pad. A fourth line across the withers where the gullet lip would sit is also needed if tall withers are a concern. Then we get them to draw the topline and mark on it where the other lines cross it. Knowing what is truly horizontal by using a level on the back and transferring that to the drawing is helpful in knowing how "downhill" a horse is. If they do this, make sure the ground under the horse is level first! We also ask people to send us "side lines" from where the bar will actually be resting, from bar tip to bar tip, and extended forward over the shoulder. We ask them to mark on this "side line" where the lines across the back cross it. We feel this gives us the best representation of the shape we are trying to match.

Pictures are also helpful, but can be deceiving based on lighting, etc. It really helps if people put masking tape on their horse first where they are going to take the back drawings, and then take pictures with the tape still on. Four views are good: from the side, the back, and angled from both front and back. We find that the tape really helps us see the shape of the back better, especially the "side lines".

Bottom line, though, is the same old story. You have to see a tree from that maker and try it on horses to see how it fits. Then you know what you may want different for another tree. They know what they did to make it, so they can figure out how to change it to be the way you want it.

Bar thickness and its relationship to shape: Having a thicker bar does keep you a little bit further off your horse, but that extra ¼" in thickness isn't a mile, and we see the advantages of thicker bars in a number of areas. So having thin bars just isn't a goal we aim for since we don't see a huge benefit in it.

The disadvantage of thicker bars is that may they take more work to block the skirts. A thin bar is often narrower at the edges, making blocking skirts easier, but a thicker bar can also be made to have thinner edges to improve the ease of blocking the skirts.

One big disadvantage of thinner bars is strength. The thinner the wood, the weaker it is, obviously. So thickness adds strength. (So does thicker rawhide, which is probably more important where strength is a major concern.) If the wood is thicker, it doesn't have to be as wide for the same strength, and that will help in building a narrower seat.

Another disadvantage to thin bars is that it limits the amount of "relief" you can give to the edge of a bar. We use the term "relief" to describe the rounding off of the edge of the bottom of the bar so that it doesn't dig into the horse. You want relief at the bar edge, especially at the back bar tip. (When a bar tree is placed on a horse, we like to see the back bar tip come off the back. If it touches when unweighted, it will dig in with weight on it.) You don't want the edge to dig in anywhere. How much it might dig in depends on the shape of the horse and the over all shape of the bottom of the bar. For horses that are very muscular and whose back muscles bulge up from the spinal column and out from the wither pocket, this isn't a problem. You are fitting something that is the shape of a (slightly flattened) ball anyway, so the muscle will fall away from the bar edge anyway. You don't have to make it do that. (These are horses where you want an overall flatter shape to the bottom of the bar.) But for horses whose muscles are very flat, you want to gradually lift the bar edges away from that muscle so they don't stick in and hurt the horse, and that is where the relief comes in. (These are horses where you want a more rounded shape to the bottom off the bar overall.) If the bar is very thin, you can't build in much relief. If it is thicker, you can build in more.

Flare is, in essence, extensive relief that starts further away from the edge and rises enough that it affects how you make the top of the bar as well, or else you would run out of thickness of wood before you got to the edge. The thinner the bar, the more the bar has to be "flared" to give the same amount of relief as you could with a thicker bar. The aim is to give surface area on the top of the bar for the saddle maker to use, but limit contact of the underside of the bar on the horse where it may interfere with his movements. If the bar is thick enough to provide a well rounded edge, the only area we see where interference may be a concern is at the shoulder. So long as the tree has enough rock, we haven't seen a need to flare the outside edge of the back bar pad. Maybe that is because of the relief we can build in.

As Bruce's question implies, you are losing contact area in the flared section in order to avoid possible interference with the horse. We think the more surface area you have on the horse the better until you get to the point of interference. Where is that point? It varies with how the horse is built (how flat the shoulders, how far back they extend, how far he rotates them back, etc.), the discipline he is used for and the way he is trained. A gaited show horse that is being marked on the flashiness of its leg movement is asked to move its shoulders a lot and will need less possibility of interference than a ranch horse that is being roped off all day. But the ranch horse sure appreciates the extra surface area over which to distribute the pressure of that cow hitting the end of the rope, even if you dally.

The idea of bar width (or depth) fits in here too. The wider the bar, the greater the surface area. But if it is "flared away" a lot it isn't contacting the horse, effectively making it a narrower bar. We don't see much point in having bar surface where it isn't contacting the horse as long as the saddle maker has enough to work with on the top. So if shoulder interference might to be a problem, our solution is to cut back the length of the bar tip so it doesn't extend forward over the shoulder, and with a thicker bar we can round the edge more than we could with a thinner bar, which helps with the full shoulder extension phase.

A deeper (wider) bar increases the surface area on the horse to distribute the pressure better. This is the idea with Wade bars. They are wider than the others (comparing within the maker's bar styles and not between makers) because they were designed as ranch work saddles. But what about the "waist" area? If you are riding broad backed Quarter Horses, your knees will be further apart than if you are riding Thoroughbreds, no matter what the seat is like. All bars are narrowed where the rider's leg goes, and the narrower the middle, the easier it is for the saddle maker to make a narrow seat, but the less surface area there is on the horse, and the weaker the bar is. It is another one of those balancing acts. A good saddle maker can make a good seat in any tree. It is just a bit harder in some than in others (and that difficulty may have nothing to do with the width). And a poor saddle maker can make a bad seat in the best tree. So while having a "narrow waist" is nice, it isn't as important as the skill of the saddle maker in building the seat.

As to the different wood used to make bars, there are three factors I can think of now that affect the choice of wood. The first is a very practical one – availability, especially in the size you need. It might be your first choice of wood for bars, but if you can't get it, you don't use it. The second factor would be properties of the wood. Strength is a hard thing to determine, because there are so many facets to it. Is a wood stronger because it takes more PSI to make it snap (like a hardwood such as maple) or because it can bend more before breaking (like fir)? Some woods break easily across the grain, but don't split lengthwise. Others are the opposite. Some may take more constant pressure before they break, but are more apt to split when tacks are hammered in. Screw holding ability also is a factor. The number of defects in the wood and the ease of cutting around them is a factor. And workability is a big one. The harder the wood, the harder it is to cut and shape. Some of the "old masters" could make a drawknife sing, but they used mainly pine in their trees. With the advent of carving discs, etc. the use of harder woods is now an option that they didn't have available to them with their tools. And let's face it, cost comes into play a bit too. If we are happy with either of two options, the lower priced one will be purchased.

We like yellow poplar for the bars. It is available in a 2" thickness, and we have a supplier that lets us pick through a couple of lifts if need be to get the boards we want. While it is heavier than pine, it is about the same weight as fir (which we can't get easily), but it is substantially stronger. It is very difficult to break, and then it splits lengthwise, not across the grain. The charts say this is so, and in our own "torture tests" we have proved it to be true. We use several layers of 1" hardwood in the center of our wood post horn forks and a piece of 2" hardwood in our metal horn forks. Price determines that this is usually maple. We also like birch, and have used ash. We tried oak, but it can crack too easily for our liking. The cantle and the rest of the fork are made of aspen poplar. We can get kiln dried wood closer to home than the other woods. There are fewer knots and less gumminess than with pine. And the price is OK too. So those are our choices for now.

I think that does it for this time. Again, please remember that every tree maker does things, and thinks about things, differently. These are just our ideas at this stage in our life.

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Thanks for your reply David. You present some interesting ideas to consider.

You talk about Jineta and Brida. I have a slight acquaintance with these terms. From what I understand, a "Jineta seat" would be one with the rider's weight balanced over both pin bones and more centered in the saddle, with their hips and head in a vertical line and their heels under them, so if the horse were removed from underneath them they would land in a standing position with slightly bent legs. This is what the saddle makers from the vaquero style strive for. A "Brida seat" would be one that put the weight of the rider at the base of the cantle with the feet further forward; more of a "chair" position. If the horse were removed from underneath them, they would fall backward to land on their butt. Is this a correct understanding of these terms, in your interpretation?

Maybe because we make very few trees compared to the entire market and they go to people who hand make saddles, we deal with people who seem to think a lot differently than the regular "retailers" that you describe. I can only think of one saddle maker we have built the occasional tree for that would consider the "chair" type of seat to be at all desirable. (He has some other "different" ideas too.) All the rest of the custom saddle makers we know work to make a good seat of the "standing" type. The "chair" type of seat is what we commonly see in production saddles, though, as well as some custom ones. We think the advantages that a buyer gets in a hand made saddle should be mainly in two areas - better fit for their horses and better fit for themselves, which means a good groundseat. Fancy carving would be in addition to these two things, if you want it. (Now that would be an interesting discussion to read from different saddle makers - how to build a good groundseat.) As a tree maker, we feel that the fit for the horse is mainly our job. The saddle maker shouldn't have to make any changes to a tree to make it fit better, though they do need to give us good information about the type of horse this tree with be used on at the beginning. But the groundseat and fit for the rider is mainly the responsibility of the saddle maker. As I said before "A good saddle maker can make a good seat in any tree. It is just a bit harder in some than in others and that difficulty may have nothing to do with the width. And a poor saddle maker can make a bad seat in the best tree." Our job as a tree maker is to make the seat in the tree as much like the final seat in the saddle as possible so as to decrease the amount of time and effort the saddle maker needs to put in to make a good groundseat. If he wants to make a "chair" type of seat in one of our trees, he has to work hard to do it.

I cringe when I read that jousting saddles used to be made with"two large arches whose purpose was to dig in to the horses back to stabilize the saddle". What a terrible thing to do to a horse. The purpose of the front bar pads (and the rest of the bar) on our trees are to help distribute the weight of the rider over as wide an area as possible, without interfering with the horse, so as to lower the amount of pressure in any one area and the overall PSI. There is an area on a horse that has a "good saddle back", as the old cowboys called it, where a slightly convex bar pad fits into a slight concavity behind the shoulders. That is the area we call the wither "pocket" - recognizing that in a lot of horses this area is flat or convex, filled with either muscle or fat as we discussed before. If the tree "digs in" anywhere something is very wrong.

I can understand that new technology and computers could be a very valuable tool in designing and building trees. The truth is that we don't use a duplicating machine of any type. Our method of building trees is by marking all the parts with specific measurements that vary depending on what we are trying to do, and hand carving the individual parts to those measurements. The bars don't get turned out on a machine in a couple of minutes. They get individually made by hand. This explains the small number of trees we can build per year. It also explains how we can more easily handle special requests. We don't have to change any machines to do it. We just use a different measurement here and there.

But we also have a choice in what we will and we won't do in meeting a saddle maker's request. If they want something like the shape of a fork to be different, fine. That is a personal preference thing that we can easily work with. But if they want to change something that we consider would change the functionality of our trees, we think long and hard about the request. We are always open to learning new things, and we have learned many things from good saddle makers. To just say no without knowing where the request is coming from and thinking about it would be foolish because then we would be thinking that we had cornered the market on knowledge. But when it comes to some areas, especially fit, we have (and use) the prerogative of saying no. (That is why we never have made and never will make an Arizona bar in our shop. And that is why the one maker who likes making the "chair" seat doesn't like the seat we put into our trees - and will continue to not like it. It won't be changed for him.)

We have a totally different market than a large production tree company. We don't get saddle companies phoning us - we get individual saddle makers working out of small shops. We find when we talk with them about why we do what we do in the areas we don't want to change, they are generally willing to listen and consider what we have to say. Commonly, they haven't heard the information we have to give them, and once they know it, they can see where we are coming from and are OK with what we do. Often they are passing along a request from one of their customers and we try to help them explain to the customer why what they are asking for is not a good idea. If the customer is still adamant that they want something that we are not willing to do, they need to find a tree from another source. For us, that would be the loss of one order, and possibly one saddle maker. For a production company, it may be the loss of several thousand orders. I'm glad we don't have to deal with that. And I'm also glad that part of what we can do to help the industry is to let saddle makers know more of what we have learned over the years. Then they can decide if they want to agree or not, but at least they have the information.

As far as the back tracings go, I really like the idea of having the topline curve put on a horizontal line the way you do it. That would really give you a good picture of how "downhill" or not a horse is. I also like the way you position the marks from across the back on the right matching with the topline drawing on the left. It gives a more easily seen mental picture of the horse's back. Maybe with your computer programs you can take these drawings, plug them in, and see things in 3D (that must be nice). But we don't have that availability, which is why we like the "side lines" we ask for. We feel it gives us a better mental picture. The idea of being able to "identify standard rib cage shapes" sounds intriguing. I guess I wonder if there are such things, or if there is just a continuum along which the changes go. If it is so, it would sure make fitting trees to horses a whole lot easier. But I can see the need to have computers and high tech stuff to figure that out, which is not our area at all. If you have the capacity to do that kind of research, that is great. I know it would be very valuable.

I can also understand the possible advantages of choosing a point of anatomy rather than a point on a tree as your basis for where to take the cross drawings to give more consistency. I can see that consistency in the choice of the last rib since that doesn't change. But I wonder about the variance you get with measuring based on the point of maximum height or the base of the withers. On some horses, the withers go way back behind the shoulders. On others, they quit much futher ahead. Some horses have very tall withers and other very flat withers. And is the tallest point in the withers similar to the longest finger on people - it varies between individuals? These factors would make a difference between horses in where those lines are taken compared to the rest of the rib cage. Maybe you are able to account for these differences with your computer program.

You say your tree is designed to sit further forward on a horse's back. Where do you expect contact to be with your trees? Would you be willing to explain more about why?

Although I suspect there will always be areas about which we will choose to disagree with each other, I believe we think a lot more alike than may be evident at first glance. We are all trying to figure out how to make a saddle more comfortable for the horse, and to make a seat that enhances rather than hinders the rider with the result that they can communicate better and enjoy each other more. How we may do that is the difference. And there may never be a "right" answer.

[David Genadek]

Rod,

Where do you expect contact to be with your trees? Would you be willing to explain more about why?

The contact will be in the same place as it would be on your trees because we have a limited amount of space that can actually bear the wieght. I am basically extending the front of the bar forward with the notion it that it is there to allow me to construct the saddle but will not bear wieght. This eliminates any possability that the front edge of the bar will dig in and this allows me to put the rider more forward on to an area that is easier for the horse to carry the wieght. It also resolves many of the issues people have with skirt leangth. It is basically taken what you have said about gullet width and hand hold area one step further. The down side is once you make this move you have to be very delibrate in your saddle making.

David Genadek

[mulefool]

I just came across this forum and am really enjoying these disscussions of trees and fitting. So David am I understanding you correctly that you flare the front of the bar enough that it wouldn't bear weight and then place the saddle further forward so that the front edge would rest over the shoulder blade? But because it's flared it would not create a problem?

My personal interest is in mules, and I'd be interested in hearing any of your ideas on fitting them. Of course they are as varied in their backs as horses. But in general they do present some challenges. If you were trying to design an animal that would be built for carrying a saddle alot of mules would not fall into that category.