Does This Saddle Look Assymetrical?

[Denise]

The posts where silverdollarmagic showed the condition of the tree when she got it must have been posted during the 12 hours lost with the server switch over. It was a wood/rawhide tree and it was obviously broken. The seller refunded her the money for the saddle. I hope she will repost the pictures so we can see what she did when it came to her.

Saddlebag, when you look at the angle of the rim of the cantle itself it slants upwards toward the right while the fork is straight or even slanting slightly downwards towards the right. However, the angle at which pictures are taken can really distort how things appear to be. Even when looking at something with our own eyes, there is so much optical illusion that we often don't "see straight". So it is pretty tough to make final decisions based on pictures. Seeing the real thing often makes things very obvious, as in this case.

[silverdollarmagic]

The posts where silverdollarmagic showed the condition of the tree when she got it must have been posted during the 12 hours lost with the server switch over. It was a wood/rawhide tree and it was obviously broken. The seller refunded her the money for the saddle. I hope she will repost the pictures so we can see what she did when it came to her.

Saddlebag, when you look at the angle of the rim of the cantle itself it slants upwards toward the right while the fork is straight or even slanting slightly downwards towards the right. However, the angle at which pictures are taken can really distort how things appear to be. Even when looking at something with our own eyes, there is so much optical illusion that we often don't "see straight". So it is pretty tough to make final decisions based on pictures. Seeing the real thing often makes things very obvious, as in this case.

I wondered what happened to those photos, so here they are again. I took the fenders off because they are pretty nice actually. Nice thick leather. In good shape:

[gothcowboy]

I wondered what happened to those photos, so here they are again. I took the fenders off because they are pretty nice actually. Nice thick leather. In good shape:

That wood screw in the tree looks like it might be right in the middle of a crack. It's in an odd place. It might just be the photo, but the tree itself looks suspect. Also, if that wood screw is in a crack, it's just making it worse (or caused it), and it could help explain why there's some warping going on. That telltale wood screw might explain why it was "for sale." It doesn't look safe or sound, but it might only be I can't get enough perspective from the closeup. (But who puts wood screws right in a crack?)

I had a colt saddle - some unmarked production saddle from the 50s - with nice thick leather and a boogered rawhide covered tree. I ended up selling it as a decoration. Not safe at any speed, and probably wasn't very comfortable for the horse. There are lots of sound colt saddles out there, and a lot of them are production saddles. Production isn't necessarily bad. But even custom stuff is bad if it's broken.