Building a ladies seat

[RyanCope]

Naked butt molds? Come on. It's not April fools day. Sounds more like a pre-cursor to an expensive divorce and/ or a mid-life crisis. Was it more difficult to get the men to strip naked and sit on a horse in a garbage bag, or the women?

Ryan Cope

[David Genadek]

Naked butt molds? Come on. It's not April fools day. Sounds more like a pre-cursor to an expensive divorce and/ or a mid-life crisis. Was it more difficult to get the men to strip naked and sit on a horse in a garbage bag, or the women?

Ryan Cope

I did the naked ones in Sedona so every one was pretty open to it for scientific purposes.

David Genadek

[Hidemechanic]

As to carving a gender specific seat for me has never been too much of an issue only because I have been able to have the customer sit in the seat as I was carving it. That doesn't mean I can do a good gender specific seat for someone that can't sit for me.

Now, I will publicly admit that I do have a hard time carving a generic seat. That is, a saddle built to sell to now one in particular.

I also have been lucky enough to have my wife be able to sit my seats while I carve them, and she usually manages to help me get a seat that everyone likes who sits it.

I can't however carve a seat for myself to save my aching butt. But that's probably due to the fact that I have a wierd ars butt.

As David said, and I have found, when you keep in mind the angles of thigh bones as they lay in the seat it becomes easier to see where to carve. My problem is in fine tuning if I don't have a client on site. I get nervous if I have to make a best guess, but I've never had any complaints.

Now a subject that I have held off talking about is "close contact", because I didn't want to come off sounding snobbish or smart ars. I now see that it is a perspective subject.

There are certain terms or catch fraizes that customers latch onto, turn it into an issue that isn't one. (take it to an extreem that may not even apply to their situation)

My thought is that close contact is more aptly applied to the bars and the horse's back than the seat of the saddle. Yes, many commercial saddles tend to leave too much material in their seats and between that extra hight and poor fitting bars a rider can feel perched on top the horse. But in fact, a custom saddle builder can only get a rider so close to the horse's back before he has to change the design of the tree. Any way you look at it there is a certain amount of wood and leather between the rider and the horse.

That being said I again agree with DG that building up a bit in the center line of the seat liftes the rider away from that feeling of sitting on a 2x12. BUT the lift is neglegable as it relates to distance between the rider and the horse.

Early on when I was trying to figure out a fit problem for a gal it occoured to me that the way we are built, we have an amount of soft tissue between our seat bones and to avoid that sitting on a board, prying apart feeling, there needs to be some material right up the middle.Not a lot,just not flat.

The gal in question mentioned the problem, and I took out my wallet and told her to raise bit off the seat and I slid the wallet just to her pubis and she set back in place and said,"That's it". From then on I not only smiled every time I opened my wallet,( not really, I don't even carry a wallet) but I also paid more attention to shaping that part of the seat.

JAM, what I do when fine tuning to a customer, is let them sit the seat long enough to feel high spots, flat spots, bad spots and point them out, I skive them down untill they don't feel any spots and the seat feels cumfy to them. Usually I already have the plain of the thigh bone carved right, then fine tune the seat bone issues.

I think with all the info you are gleaning from here you will have a better idea what you are shooting for on your first ground seat. It wasn't uncommon for me to tare out a ground seat and start over with my first couple I did.

By the way, I don't know if any one has passed this tip on to you, but when you start carving a seat it is helpful to shop often, set the tree on the front bar tips(on a table or draw down) and lean the the bottom of the rear of the bars against you, with eyes closed use both hands on either side of the ground work to 'see' your progress with your hands. Since this is almost an 'R' rated topic, my mentor told me "It's a sexual thing" at least it looks like it. You'll be suprized how much better you can pick out oddities left and right, front and back, and feel the contours better than just looking at it.

Gotta keep things interesting,right?

Best wishes,GH

[Todd]

This thread has single handedly made the effort involved in becoming a member of Leatherworker.Net well worth it. i will never again be able to size a seat for a woman with a straight face. Thanks all.

[JAM]

You're welcome, Todd! And thank you Hidemechanic (and everyone else). My lifelong background is jumpers, so when I started riding western three years ago, in standard commercial saddles, I felt very "perched" and the first thing that came to mind was "close contact" - I want to be part of my horse again, not sitting way up in the air just waiting to be dumped at the first spook or crow-hop or happy-dance. I've since come to realize that the "perched" feeling is precisely because my saddle doesn't fit me, not because of the inches between me and my horse. So, with all the help I've gotten here, my next saddle is going to fit me as well as my old jumping saddle.

[David Genadek]

You're welcome, Todd! And thank you Hidemechanic (and everyone else). My lifelong background is jumpers, so when I started riding western three years ago, in standard commercial saddles, I felt very "perched" and the first thing that came to mind was "close contact" - I want to be part of my horse again, not sitting way up in the air just waiting to be dumped at the first spook or crow-hop or happy-dance. I've since come to realize that the "perched" feeling is precisely because my saddle doesn't fit me, not because of the inches between me and my horse. So, with all the help I've gotten here, my next saddle is going to fit me as well as my old jumping saddle.

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A level pelvis opens the joints and allows you to get your leg on. Leg contact is close contact. The master of this is Peggy Cummings I used to actually bring her in to help train my ground work people. Her work is worth paying attention to. She helped Sally Swift devleope Centered riding but in my opinion she has taken that work to a new level.

David Genadek

[JAM]

A post-script: The most comfortable, all-around-usable saddle I've ever ridden in is my old Berney jumping saddle, so as an experiment yesterday I rode both my horses in that saddle with the stirrups let down long. Not only was it far and away more comfortable than any western saddle I have or have ever ridden in, it allowed me to sit the way I'm supposed to sit, and the horses moved better, and my back, butt, and knees didn't hurt when I was done. So I looked at that seat in light of what I've learned here, and saw that it's built like a "ladies' seat" should be built. It's kinda like a well-padded, slick-fork ladies' seat ranch saddle. So now I have a physical model to copy in building the seat in my soon-to-be-started saddle. I'll post the results here when I finally finish.

[Turtlepaint]

I'm about to build my first saddle and, being a woman, I want it to fit me well. I've read that some of you are really good at building a "ladies seat" and I'd like to know what differences/specifics I should be incorporating into my seat to make it work better for me than the average men's saddle? Is this info already written somewhere or incorporated into any makers' videos? Thanks in advance for any advice.

Dear Jam,

I read a bit through the answers. I can understand your need! Maybe you find some more info in this article. I found it very informative.

http://equinestudies.org/knowledge_base/built_to_ride.html

Kind reagrds, Bea