Charro Horn Wade

[Go2Tex]

Well, here it is, my latest creation. Timberline Ray Hunt Wade tree with a 5.5" charro horn. scallops on the horn, cantle, skirts and stirrup half covers. Hermann Oak leather with dark brown antique and black trim. Trina Weber 4" bell stirrups, and Hansens sterling overlay conchos and buckle set on the rope strap. Oh yeah, Weaver black latigo and shearling.

[Steve Brewer]

Brent,Pretty fancy rig.You should be happy with this one

Steve

[D.A. Kabatoff]

Nice work Brent... they just keep getting better! Love the horn.

Darc

[MarkB]

Really Nice Tex.

I'm sure it took some time to do the dyeing and finish work.

Hope some day I can do a saddle that look 1/2 that nice.

How long did take you to make?

Mark

[jwwright]

Bueno!, Senor Brent. JW

[gtwister09]

Brent,

Really nice. Great contrasts with dyeing and matching finish work...even with the strings. WOW! On the horn with the silverwork, tooling/design.

Regards,

Ben

[jbird]

Brent amazing work

how do you do the staining the black with out getting it on the light leather.

Josh

[Rundi]

Tex ,

The saddle that you posted looks great. I liked the way you carved the cantel and the horn looked great. I joined just to reply to your saddle.

Rundi

[hidepounder]

Wow, Brent! That's a stunning rig! I know you had fun making that one! It's the kind that belongs in a show somewhere! Great job!

Bob

[bruce johnson]

Tex ,

The saddle that you posted looks great. I liked the way you carved the cantel and the horn looked great. I joined just to reply to your saddle.

Rundi

Brent,

Yeah, what she said! That is one cool saddle.

[daviD A Morris]

Up till 10 minutes ago I've never realy fancied saddles with that much contrast in the colors. I think you've done an absolutely bloody brilliant job of matching the overall design/style and the colors.

I realy like they way the seed pods in the flowers give the appearance of being so deep, gives perspective to the flowers. Like the proportion of borders to floral tooling. Sure has come together well.

And great photography!

dam

Edited May 2, 2009 by daviD A Morris

[skip]

you should enter that one in the brownwood boot and saddle roundup in texas in October. very nice looking great lines.

[gtwister09]

FYI.

It has not been in Brownwood for many years... It is now in Witchita Falls.

Regards,

Ben

you should enter that one in the brownwood boot and saddle roundup in texas in October. very nice looking great lines.

[mulefool]

Really nice, kicking it up three or four notches, at least.

[mudman]

Fancy rig!! Looks good.

[wood]

Simply amazing. I agree with putting it in at Wichita Falls. I like how your border stamp make even some of the flat lines look scalloped to match. The dye job is flawless. Great pics to match a great saddle.

[Casey Jordan]

Brent,

I agree with everyone else, it should be in a contest.

If you are interested please go to my earlier post:

http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=14419

The contest is coming up quick, but would love to have you enter.

That is a beautiful saddle!!!!!

[Elwood Turner]

Great looking saddle!!!

[Go2Tex]

Thanks to all for the great comments and compliments. I'd love to enter this one in a show, maybe even Sheridan, but, it's promised to a customer in Italy and I know how much he wants to have it for the Spring riding season over there. That's why I've been working long long days to get 'er done these last few weeks. I started it, officially, on March 9, when the tree arrived. The color, the black borders and trim, all took extra time and considerable consternation. Not to mention all those pins I had to nail in. It's hard to see but the horn cap is scalloped and pinned and so is the cantle binding. I had to make a tool to cut them since the one I use for rosettes was too small. It's a 1/4" drive punch ground off on one side and then sharpened and polished. No big deal but time consumming. Getting it all to match up was a real challenge. Normally, I try to avoid all those lines coming together so if something gets a bit distorted during the build, it doesn't show as much. There was no avoiding it on this one.

Thanks should be given to Barry King for his excellent push beader tool that I used all over this one. It works great once you get the hang of it. I used a resist on the beads and then carefully dyed the edges right up to the bead with a small brush. The border stamp helped to capture the dye so it didn't blead into the bead. Yeah, lots of sweat and a few stiff swigs of JD was needed after that work to calm the nerves let me tell ya.

But then, the dark antique did the rest. Any missed areas between the bead and the border, down in the border stamping was filled in nicely by the antique. I discovered I really like that Tandy Satin Sheen. It dries quickly and doesn't leave that plastic look that you get with Resolene. it also seals the black dye and leaves it looking like a soft leather, rather than patent leather.

The flowers were a little change-up. I came up with a new one after looking at my Wife's Petunias. I thought it would be a neat one to do, so I developed something that would adapt to leather carving and viola'. It kinda evolved as I went along. The nice thing about this flower is that it can be reshaped to fit the area quite nicely and that adds variety. I also threw into the mix an old Sheridan stand-by flower every now and then, just for a little variety.

The flower center stamps I have just didn't work on Petunias, so I went back to using a Craftool single background matting stamp. It's about the size of a medium sized seeder but makes a bunch of tiny holes in a circle. I use it on different angles on the center area to give it depth and roundness, then leave a highlight area clean in the middle, much as you would the center of an eye on a painting, to give it life. This also evolved as I went along, so you'll notice a few panels that didn't get that little effect. At first I was just making it like Petunias look, a deep hole with lines converging into it.

[Blake]

Hi Brent

Fantastic job. You probably needed some R&R after that one.

I was hoping to see it at W.F. this October so maybe you need to do it again. LOL

Best Regards

Blake

[Hilly]

That saddle is very beautiful. I want one, and I don't even own a horse!

[mulefool]

So I keep looking at this and seeing really nice little details. Also thinking about how easy it would be to accidently get some dye on the wrong part. But I'm curious about the horn. I see your escutcheon pins on the underside. At first I thought it was a binding, but then I realized I didn't see any stitch line on top. Does the cap come down and form the binding and then it is just pinned in place so there is no stitch line? Whatever it is, it looks sharp. Chris

[Traveller]

Wow! That's an amazing saddle. I'm glad your customer wants to ride in it instead of just have it sit around as a most gorgeous piece of art... which it could certainly do quite well!

I'm also glad you got excellent photos of it. Amazing.

Wow! (have I said that before?)

Joanne

[Go2Tex]

So I keep looking at this and seeing really nice little details. Also thinking about how easy it would be to accidently get some dye on the wrong part. But I'm curious about the horn. I see your escutcheon pins on the underside. At first I thought it was a binding, but then I realized I didn't see any stitch line on top. Does the cap come down and form the binding and then it is just pinned in place so there is no stitch line? Whatever it is, it looks sharp. Chris

Ah yes, the horn ..... I stitched the bottom piece and filler together. The filler gets nailed down on the top of the horn, so the whole thing is solid. The bottom piece overlaps in the rear and is glued and tacked down, the flange is then folded out flush with the round filler. The neck on these charro horns is so short that there is very little space anyway, so a tack holds the upper lap below the swell cover line. Then, the top piece is cut round, folded down wet around the horn for marking, removed, scalloped and put back on to dry. Then you nail 'er down. It's that simple. Nice thing about it, if your stitching sucks, do it like this. It don't show. Same with the cantle. Your front stitch line shows, of course, but the back side.... NADA. I flew around this cantle! Well, until I had to put all those pins in the backside.

[RichardCollmorgen]

I can't add anything but, WOW!