Re-Blocking Skirts That Have A Gel Pad

[alb]

Somebody brought a saddle into the shop yesterday that looks like this one on e-bay. As you can see from the pics, the skirts haven't been blocked properly. I figured I could re-block the skirts but I'm not sure it would work with the gel type pad that has been sewn in between the skirt and fleece. I've never worked on a saddle that had a gel pad.

Anybody have any experience with these?

[gothcowboy]

Wow, those skirts are scary. It looks like it was designed to sit on a floor and not a horse's back. Do you know if it even fits a horse, or did they want the skirts blocked in advance? A lot of those import trees have a weird dip in them from front to back, so even if the skirts were blocked the tree itself is torture.

I reblocked some old American made saddles by getting the skirts really wet and putting them on a draw down stand for, like, four months or so (I just left them there to make sure they would behave themselves when I uncorked them). I guess it wouldn't take four months, but that's how long they usually ended up there, forgotten. But these were not light oil or unfinished leather, so I wasn't worried about water stains. It worked like a charm, though.

The color of this doesn't look especially imported, but most of those padded skirt saddles are, so that's probably a good guess, especially if the skirts and rigging are super thin.

Maybe a few light coats of Neatsfoot oil, soak the skirts with a sponge and water, then punish it on a draw down stand? Imported saddles should be punished. It's not like you have to feel bad about it or anything. (You might have a hard time explaining that philosophy to the owner.)

[alb]

I took a closer look at this saddle. When turned upside down, there was a gap of approx 1 inch between the skirts and the tree itself - the skirts just sort of hung off the tree. I warned the owner that I would be willing to do the work but was concerned about what I would find once I pulled off the fleece. They might potentially be looking at full replacement of the skirts and who knows what else. They wisely decided to not waste the money on this saddle.

Ann