Best all-around gullet width and bar angle for QH rig

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Perhaps I should just describe the horse types to him and let his best judgement prevail.

Ponygirl, I would say that is your best course of action. Every treemaker knows how they want to fit a particular style of horse and what they need to do to get that fit. Being too specific with specs without knowing how that maker's trees fit could get you want you don't want, whereas giving them the freedom to decide their specs for a type of horse is more apt to get you what you do want.

As far as measuring your old saddle, we wrote Bar Angles, Why the Numbers Are Meaningless Between Makers to help people understand why that doesn't work. Unfortunate, but true.

[PiconPunch]

I am new here and found this little board and have been reading it alot lately. I have just recently been comparing different saddles and trees and ones that will fit most horses. I ride usually high withered appendix quarter horses and they just dont seem to make production saddles to fit them very good. I currently have one custom saddle that fits just about any horse I have ever ridden and it has a 6" wide gullet and not sure what bars it it has but it fits nicely. I have another saddle on order and I did ask the maker what would be the best for high withered horses and at the same time something that would fit everything. His reply was a 6" gullet and northwest bars in the tree. There doesnt seem to be much info available to the general public about bar angles except the QH, Semi QH, ect. I do have to wonder what a saddle with a 7" wide gullet fits. I have a production trophy saddle I won with full QH bars and a 7" gullet and it doesnt seem to fit anything real well at all. What is the difference between say, AZ bars, Ellensburg, Wade, and Northwest bars? All information would be of help. Thanks

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

At the risk of giving you information overload, check out this old thread on Bars and Bottoms. http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=12763

As a quick answer to your question on bar types: First thing - they vary between tree makers. Nothing is standard. Some of the names have to do with the shape of the outline - how much overall surface area there is. Some makers have specific amounts of rock and twist to go with the names they call their bars. Others (ourselves included) use measurements to make those changes. The only thing that is really consistent is that Arizona bars only have a front stirrup groove, no back groove. This was started to cut back on breakage at the stirrup groove, but it means you either have a lump at the edge of the stirrup leather or a section of the bar that doesn't have contact, cutting down usable surface area, by trying to avoid that lump. We won't build them because we feel it will adversely affect fit either way. While there is a more common shape often associated with the Arizona bar, some makers offer "Arizona bars" as an option within their other bar types. In other words, the other bar outlines and shape but with no back stirrup groove. The "Wade bars" generally have a longer front bar tip to accommodate the thicker stock on a Wade tree and have a larger overall surface area. "Northwest bars" also have an overall larger surface area to distribute the rider's weight better than a lot of the other types. Both of these last two have been used more on ranch saddles that are used for long hours.

[PiconPunch]

At the risk of giving you information overload, check out this old thread on Bars and Bottoms. http://leatherworker...showtopic=12763

As a quick answer to your question on bar types: First thing - they vary between tree makers. Nothing is standard. Some of the names have to do with the shape of the outline - how much overall surface area there is. Some makers have specific amounts of rock and twist to go with the names they call their bars. Others (ourselves included) use measurements to make those changes. The only thing that is really consistent is that Arizona bars only have a front stirrup groove, no back groove. This was started to cut back on breakage at the stirrup groove, but it means you either have a lump at the edge of the stirrup leather or a section of the bar that doesn't have contact, cutting down usable surface area, by trying to avoid that lump. We won't build them because we feel it will adversely affect fit either way. While there is a more common shape often associated with the Arizona bar, some makers offer "Arizona bars" as an option within their other bar types. In other words, the other bar outlines and shape but with no back stirrup groove. The "Wade bars" generally have a longer front bar tip to accommodate the thicker stock on a Wade tree and have a larger overall surface area. "Northwest bars" also have an overall larger surface area to distribute the rider's weight better than a lot of the other types. Both of these last two have been used more on ranch saddles that are used for long hours.

Thank you so much for the info. Seems like I learn more all the time when it comes to saddles. I wish the whole generic thing, QH, Full QH and so one would just go away as it makes no sense and as a general rule I havn't found any of those specific tree specs that fit many horses to begin with.

[David Genadek]

Gullet width is a measurement used by people that really don't know anything to make it sound like they know what they're talking about. However, there is a very important underlying concept and should be understood by all horse owners, tree makers and saddle makers.

Measurements do not define shape.

In the attached picture you will see six different shapes. To make the shapes I cut six pieces of wire 24 inches long. So you can see in measuring them I can say they are all 24 inches but yet they are vastly different shapes. In the top row you will see a triangle, a circle and a rectangle. These three shades of very familiar to all of us when I say Circle you know immediately what shape I'm talking about because you know the word circle represents an data set of going that far equal distance from the center point. When hear the word rectangle you understand vaguely what shape it is going to be until you have a set of data that defines the height and width you really don't know what shape the rectangle is. the triangle takes even more information you need to know the measurement of two sides and an angle or two angles and a side to be able to properly define the shape. Trigonometry is a whole math designed to allow us to figure out the shape of a triangle. So there are three very simple two-dimensional shapes that take a lot of information to define what shape they actually are. How would you go about defining the shape of the three bottom shapes?

I have also attached a picture called bar comparison pdf of my most common bar shapes as you will be able to see my angle ranges exceed what others are discussing here and this is only the mid range of what I deal with. Last year I did trees ranging from 80° to 140°. The profiles in the PDF are actual sections of backs from real horses. The rectangles underneath are our attempt to find some type of ratio analysis to understand back shape. They do serve as a summary of the overall shape of the bar and its orientation in three-dimensional space.

When you're talking about saddle fit you're talking about very complex shapes, imagine a pyramid plunging its way up through a book binding. When you can see that then you will realize that making a big deal of gullet measurement is like saying the bottom three shapes in the shapes picture are 24". It really means next to nothing because measurements do not define shape. Another thing that is important to understand is that whenever you make a change in a measurement of a tree it also requires a adjustment of the overall shape of the bar. This is why the military failed with the saddles that had self adjusting angles. You can change the angles but if you don't also change the overall shape of the bar you will have problems.

David Genadek

01-12 2009_Bar no 3 thru no 1 testing correlations.pdf

01-12 2009_Bar no 3 thru no 1 testing correlations.pdf

Edited January 9, 2010 by David Genadek

[PiconPunch]

Gullet width is a measurement used by people that really don't know anything to make it sound like they know what they're talking about. However, there is a very important underlying concept and should be understood by all horse owners, tree makers and saddle makers.

Measurements do not define shape.

In the attached picture you will see six different shapes. To make the shapes I cut six pieces of wire 24 inches long. So you can see in measuring them I can say they are all 24 inches but yet they are vastly different shapes. In the top row you will see a triangle, a circle and a rectangle. These three shades of very familiar to all of us when I say Circle you know immediately what shape I'm talking about because you know the word circle represents an data set of going that far equal distance from the center point. When hear the word rectangle you understand vaguely what shape it is going to be until you have a set of data that defines the height and width you really don't know what shape the rectangle is. the triangle takes even more information you need to know the measurement of two sides and an angle or two angles and a side to be able to properly define the shape. Trigonometry is a whole math designed to allow us to figure out the shape of a triangle. So there are three very simple two-dimensional shapes that take a lot of information to define what shape they actually are. How would you go about defining the shape of the three bottom shapes?

I have also attached a picture called bar comparison pdf of my most common bar shapes as you will be able to see my angle ranges exceed what others are discussing here and this is only the mid range of what I deal with. Last year I did trees ranging from 80° to 140°. The profiles in the PDF are actual sections of backs from real horses. The rectangles underneath are our attempt to find some type of ratio analysis to understand back shape. They do serve as a summary of the overall shape of the bar and its orientation in three-dimensional space.

When you're talking about saddle fit you're talking about very complex shapes, imagine a pyramid plunging its way up through a book binding. When you can see that then you will realize that making a big deal of gullet measurement is like saying the bottom three shapes in the shapes picture are 24". It really means next to nothing because measurements do not define shape. Another thing that is important to understand is that whenever you make a change in a measurement of a tree it also requires a adjustment of the overall shape of the bar. This is why the military failed with the saddles that had self adjusting angles. You can change the angles but if you don't also change the overall shape of the bar you will have problems.

David Genadek

Thank you so much for posting that. I learn something new all the time.

[steve mason]

Whew, all this measurement inconsistency is making my head spin!

The maker is Louis Carrillo out of Texas. He will be making the tree and the saddle.

this maker is not trustworthy, he recently put a saddle that was not made by him on ebay as his own.

[superstakes2002]

Hi Everybody

I got a saddle from this guy in texas Louis Carrillo the saddlamaker and its a great saddle

What problem do you have??Its a reiner saddle I have from him its SUPER !!!!!!!!!!!!

Mark E

Edited February 27, 2010 by superstakes2002

[Steve Brewer]

Hi Everybody

I got a saddle from this guy in texas Louis Carrillo the saddlamaker and its a great saddle

What problem do you have??Its a reiner saddle I have from him its SUPER !!!!!!!!!!!!

Mark E

Might be a nice saddle but he posts pictures of other peoples saddles and claims he made them.The Will James saddle that is on ebay I built last year and is setting in my shop right now.The Wade saddle was built by Robert Chavez.He claims to have built both of them,And the trees too.The will James has a Felkins tree init and I think the Chavez saddle has a Kerch tree.What he does on ebay is fraud.I am know in the process of trying to deal with his fraud on my saddle.

Steve Brewer

[equiss]

Whew, all this measurement inconsistency is making my head spin!

The maker is Louis Carrillo out of Texas. He will be making the tree and the saddle.

So to be more specific.... I start horses under saddle midway through their 3yo year. I am currently in the northeast (Vermont) but will most likely be moving to one of the Rocky mountain states this fall when I finish graduate school. Many QH here have too much TB in them for my liking. I am more interested in a saddle that will fit an average ranch QH (not the halter bread ones that are HUGE, or the ones with tons of TB in them, somewhere in the middle). Optimally this new saddle will fit horses that are older colts (I guess when I say colts I think of not finished). So perhaps 5 yo and up animals. My apologies for the confusion there.

I got the angles on my visalia type saddle (it's not an actual Visalia Stock saddle, that would be far too expensive to stick on a colt! lol) by measuring it. The angle on my wade saddle was provided to me by the maker, Sparky Wallace. He said the Poly Tuff wade tree I've got is a 90 angle with a 6 1/4 gullet. No sure where he got that angle from if Poly Tuff doesn't provide one.

I now understand that not all angle masurements are the same, or even meaningful.

I guess I'm still real puzzled on how to get this tree built so that it works most of the time. Perhaps I should just describe the horse types to him and let his best judgement prevail. My own personal horse is a little on the shrimpy side. The wade fits her well with a 1" pad. I don't want to build this new saddle to fit her per se, so it would be silly to measure her with the DL system.

Interesting that Vinton uses a Bowden tree. I've heard great things about these trees. Perhaps I should ask Louis if he is familiar with them.

Hello - I was wondering if you ever got your saddle from Louis? We had him make one for me close to three years ago now, the saddle was not well made so he promised to make me another if I returned it. as per my first specifications. It has been over 2 years now since that time, we are out a saddle and the money that we paid him to make it.....he has contacted me, but keeps telling me he will do it, but I don't think we will see money or a saddle from him again, and it was a lot of money to not get back! So, just curious if you got your saddle?