1St Saddle

[rgerbitz]

Only took about 10 months to complete but it is finally finished. I owe a lot to the people on here who freely give of their knowledge, this and other sites have provided me with a great deal of the information and inspiration needed to accomplish this saddle. This is the first of 14 saddles that I have agreed to make. I hope that the next one is better than this one and I am open and anxious for any critique that may be offered.

Thank you,

Rob

[harrington]

Nice job on the saddle, your schedule sounds about like mine at 10 months to get one done, having to work around my full time job. Hopefully, you'll get more time and you'll also figure out time-saver tips as you work on the other 13. What are all the details; tree maker, leather supplier, hardware, and who would order 14 saddles at one time? Good luck.

[rgerbitz]

Thank you Harrington, the tree was made by Sonny Felkins, it is has 15.5 inch seat. The leather came from herman oak and the hardware came from weaver the cinch hardware is horse shoe brand. A resort that offers trail rides ordered the first ten. My wife, daughter and a couple of others ordered the rest.

[Aurelie]

Neat job for a 1st one!

good supplies, nice tooling

You're using a sewing machine?

I like the shape of your fenders!

and i am happy to hear that i am not the only one taking time to build saddles

[Newfman]

Nice job! Looks like you jumped right in with both feet. Even the tools and bench look all shiny and new. Most big trucks start out in low gear, like 3rd or 4th, and steadily roll on through the box. I like how you just skip shifted right on into 10th and started barreling on down the highway. Lots of confidence, lots of skill, and. . .at ten months. . .lots of tenacity. Kudos, nice job and enjoy those other thirteen saddles. I think you will do real well.

Thanks for posting your work.

Cheers,

Dennis

[rgerbitz]

Thank you.

Nice job! Looks like you jumped right in with both feet. Even the tools and bench look all shiny and new. Most big trucks start out in low gear, like 3rd or 4th, and steadily roll on through the box. I like how you just skip shifted right on into 10th and started barreling on down the highway. Lots of confidence, lots of skill, and. . .at ten months. . .lots of tenacity. Kudos, nice job and enjoy those other thirteen saddles. I think you will do real well.

Thanks for posting your work.

Cheers,

Dennis

[rawhide1]

Rob

Nice looking saddle should look nice with some of your braid work.

Mike

[rgerbitz]

Thank you Mike.

Rob

Nice looking saddle should look nice with some of your braid work.

Mike

[Newfman]

So, in getting ready to do your first saddle, what tools did you start out with, aside from some of the obvious. Any that you swear you would never do this again without, but didn't think of before hand? How many sides did you end up using, and what did you do about splitting pieces where needed?

[rgerbitz]

I have a pretty basic selection of tools. There are a couple that I found I needed to get things done better. A cantle binding trimmer, which is a french edger with a longer reach and narrow blade. A 6 inch head knife for skiving, could of got along with the smaller knives but I think it is bit easier with the bigger knife. Some good quality awl blades. A variety of tools to slick and mold the leather, bouncers, creasers, and rub sticks I made some and bought some others. I used three hides making this saddle. I had to do the swell 3 times and the cantle 5 times before I was able to get things right. I also had to scrap the first seat cause somebody cut it to small the first time. You can only strech leather so much. I didn't split anything on this saddle did a lot of skiving.

Rob

[Newfman]

LOL, well, I'm sure you had a meeting of the minds with that 'somebody', that cut the seat too small the first time. At least you have a very nice piece of scrap. Plenty of things to make from that. Besides, you may be doing a small seat someday.

From another thread, i had been talking about the Dale Harwood videos. I have a list of tools that he used to make the rough-out wade on the DVD. there didn't seem like there were very many, until I looked at the list. Some were certainly to make the job quicker and cleaner, and could have been done with an existing variant. A couple things, different size edgers for example, puts his sense of finish to it. His head knife was a smaller one. That I noticed.

Dale also has a few tools that likely no longer exist, except in some little backwater used tool shack that only the locals know even exist. Hmmmm. Speaking of which. I actually know of one of those about 8 miles from here. He mostly has old blacksmiting tools and carpentry tools, but there are likely to be some useful things there. This could be fun.

What materials did you use to learn to make the patterns? Books? Videos? Deductive reasoning? Guessing?

I still think that is a great first saddle. Truly impressed.

Dennis

[rgerbitz]

To make my patterns I followed along with Jeriamiah Watts videos and used a boat load of by guess and by golly. I learned, a little to slowly, that it is best to make your patterns way to big and trim and shave as needed then to try and cover 2 feet with 1.9 feet of leather.