Saddle made in Mexico

[The Farmers Daughter]

I posted a question yesterday and received a reply that a specific brand of saddle I was interested in, was made in Mexico. The brand is Alamo. Is this a bad thing?

http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=20303&st=0&p=131311entry131311

[dirtclod]

What the other person said about Alamo was that the saddles were puttogeather in Mexico with US materials. If thats the case they may bea decent saddle. Personally i have never seen a Alamo saddle. So i can't comment for sure on how their built. Maybe somebody that has one will answer.

All of the Mexican saddles i have ever worked on or seen that were made in Mexico were junk !! I have seen beer cans put in for strainer plates, masonite used to line skirts. Rawhide on the trees just covered the edge of the bars and if you found one that had the whole tree covered alot of the time it was so thin you could tear it with your fingers. Leather wasn't any count and most of the ones i have worked on were Buck Stiched. I've seen sturip leathers that broke the first time somebody went to get on their horse. They were made to sale not to use.

[JohnBarton]

I posted a question yesterday and received a reply that a specific brand of saddle I was interested in, was made in Mexico. The brand is Alamo. Is this a bad thing?

http://leatherworker...11entry131311

It depends on how you want to look at it.

I don't ride horses. I don't build saddles. I make cue cases designed to protect thousand dollar pool cues.

Horses cost a lot of money, they are living sentinent beings that require love and care and give love back. People are priceless (most of them), accidents to people are often expensive and traumatic. Horses are powerful creatures.

So it seems to me that when you are considering what you will sit on while riding this powerful creature that you love you will want the best piece of equipment you can find that is both comfortable for the horse and for you and safe for you both.

Most of the saddle makers here are horse people from what I can tell. They are the sort who eat their own cooking and wouldn't make for you any less than they would do for themselves.

In my line of work there are cue cases made by people who don't know the first thing about $1000 cues and don't care. And predictably, those cases often fall far short of the sort of protection a fine instrument like a pool cue needs to have.

My question is this, if you don't know much about saddles and you are asking if a Mexican made saddle is any good then why don't you go with a trusted saddle maker here who knows his stuff? I understand that the price may be attractive but when you consider the cost of potential equipment failure maybe the bargain isn't so good.