Drawdown Stand Idea

[ryan]

Thought I would share an idea I came up with recently for my drawdown stand. I patterned my drawdown stand after Al Stolhman's in Vol one of the Encyclopedia of Saddlemaking, however, I never got around to making the ratchet piece to hold the drawdown bar down. I have been getting by with several pieces of scrap wood in various lengths to hold it in place. I have even used a bottle jack a time or two. I was out fixing fence the other day and while using my fence stretcher it hit me; why not use the ratchet part of an old stretcher? Finding an old one was easy and if you get one; you can cut it in two as you won't need all of it. Then you'll have another piece to make a stirrup leather stretcher! The only problem I ran into was there isn't quite enough "shoulder" on the cutouts to adequately hold the metal lip on the drawdown bar, however, it can easily be overcome by slipping a door shim on the other side of the drawdown bar. Or you can make the cutouts a little deeper with a dremel. Hope this helps someone out. I'll post some pics of it and include one of the "old george" my brother in law made me - he's pretty handy!

Ryan

[horsewreck]

Thought I would share an idea I came up with recently for my drawdown stand. I patterned my drawdown stand after Al Stolhman's in Vol one of the Encyclopedia of Saddlemaking, however, I never got around to making the ratchet piece to hold the drawdown bar down. I have been getting by with several pieces of scrap wood in various lengths to hold it in place. I have even used a bottle jack a time or two. I was out fixing fence the other day and while using my fence stretcher it hit me; why not use the ratchet part of an old stretcher? Finding an old one was easy and if you get one; you can cut it in two as you won't need all of it. Then you'll have another piece to make a stirrup leather stretcher! The only problem I ran into was there isn't quite enough "shoulder" on the cutouts to adequately hold the metal lip on the drawdown bar, however, it can easily be overcome by slipping a door shim on the other side of the drawdown bar. Or you can make the cutouts a little deeper with a dremel. Hope this helps someone out. I'll post some pics of it and include one of the "old george" my brother in law made me - he's pretty handy!

Ryan

That's a pretty good idea using the old fence stretcher bar for adjustment. Design of drawdown adjustment seem to be as numerous as saddlemakers. It's even a better idea if you hate working on fences as much as I do. Good job, keep thinking.....

[grumpyguy]

Hey Ryan,

great idea with the fence stretcher but what really impressed me was the swivel you fabricated, at least I am assuming you did it. My question is how well is it working out for you? If slippage ever becomes a problem there are some fixes I had thought of incorporating on my own rig, spherical washer sets allow you to tighten the nuts down much tighter with less mauling by standard nuts and washers

They can be found at Machinist supply shops and were designed to snug down work pieces on milling tables. They come in sets, top and bottom and go on under the nut, having worked in machine shops as a kid I have seen them tightened down so much the threads on Grade eight bolts were deformed, yet came loose fairly easily with just a wrench.

Only other thing I could suggest is to make a very slight bend up on your flat plat to help the plate get a bite on the teeth.