Mini Horse Saddle Trees

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Casey,

Interesting points from user's end. We use deerhide on our rawhided miniatures. I can see how if you used normal thin cowhide or even calf hide that comparatively it would be extra thick and you would see that especially around the horn since it is the smallest piece. Something to be aware of for sure!

[Casey Jordan]

Rod & Denise,

It's obvious you "Get It" when it comes to miniatures by using deerhide. The thinner the better to keep the bulk down.

Miniatures are hard to make look right. Even though everything is exactly to 1/2 scale it might still look out of scale.

So what do you do, leave it exactly to what the measurements say or cheat a little and make it look right?

On miniature saddles it's hard to cheat too much because you have to go by the tree for the most part.

The tree determines the skirt length, seat measurements and then everything has to be proportional to that.

Can you do me a favor just for fun?

Can you measure around a horn neck and horn cap before putting on the rawhide and then again after putting on the rawhide? How much will it gain?

It would be interesting to see the differances on a full size and miniature one. I wonder if they gain the same percentage wise.

Hope this isn't to confusing.

Casey

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Casey,

We don't build a lot of miniatures so we don't have one on hand to measure, but we did some some figuring. Here's our results:

We have one miniature metal horn of the #4/Texas dally style. It's neck diameter is 1/2", measured with calipers. The diameter of our full size #4/Texas dally horns is 15/16", so the mini is a bit more than half size. We don't have one of these rawhided right now to check it's finished thickness, but it should be similar in diamter difference to the #6 we did measure.

Measuring a full size #6/Hamley horn - diameter of the bare horn is 13/16" and circumference is 2 3/4". A rawhided one has a diameter of 1 1/8" and a circumference of 3 5/8". We generally count on about 1/8" of thickness for our rawhide, and we put the stoutest stuff over the fork and horn, so this works out.

Measured some dried deer hide we use for strings. The super thick stuff we use for cantle thongs is 1/16" thick. (Incidentally, that is the thickness of the hide on a broken tree of unknown origin we have here to duplicate.) The stuff we use for lace is thinner but still over 1/32" thick. So it is half the thickness or less of our normal rawhide. Things to learn - use our thinner deer hide on minis so it looks proportional.

We haven't actually used a metal horn yet. Most of the orders we have built have been Wades, and those that weren't were special styles that they didn't (maybe still don't) have metal horns for in miniature sizes. The one in this picture we posted has a wooden horn that we could shape the way the customer wanted it, but it ended up thicker just because it needed to be so it wouldn't break. Maybe if we used baltic birch we could make it that small and still have it strong enough. We actually have pictures of both the full size and half size saddles built on those trees and I checked out how the proportions looked. Yes, the neck of the horn on the miniature was thicker, especially with a Sam Stag rigging, but the cap looked right.

[Casey Jordan]

Thaks Rod & Deinse!

I didn't mean to give you home work, but I appreciate you taking the time to do some measuring. That helps.

Steadybrook

If your looking for miniature hadware I know that Bork Hardware and Boise Foundry both make miniature horns, oxbow stirrups and rigging hardware.

But Rod & Denise are right they have a very limited selection, especially of horns.