Ralide Trees

[Becca4U]

I think that Stohlman in his saddlemaking books gives excellent insight into the Ralide trees. I won't buy or use one.

Personally I prefer wood and rawhide covered trees. But did buy a mule saddle (from the maker - was his personal saddle). It is a wood tree with the durahide coating. Great tree and excellent saddle, but the leather does 'squeek' against the tree coating. Granted, you can get into some crazy situations even with the best mules and this saddle has held up quite well. The maker knew what he was doing!

[JerryLevine]

Ralides are fine for show or pleasure. But they are plastic and the get brittle with age. I've repaired some with shatered bar ends. The brakes tend to follow screw lines like glass follows a scratch like.

As for seats, they are not built to be anatomically corect so they would need a little work. I have modified the lumps and ridges out of them to make them comfortable(store boughts).

As for flex, they will not flex from rider's waight so as you can notice. They are a stiff piece of injection molded plastic. Probably more flex in a wood tree(but not from rider weight).

Ralide does make a flex tree that is not so stiff. I think you would have to be in an extreem situation for it to flex the way you are asking.

The only other thing is that the last time I talked to them I think they said they had a 25+ min. on ordering trees from them.

As for fasteners, I would use ring shanks and if I use screws either predrill or with drywall screws I work them in in stages, go in, back out,, go in further, back out then finish set. Hope that helps. GH

Did you use the ring shanks for everything you'd use a tack/nail for? Were they any particular finish; plated or stainelss steel?

Thanks.

Jerry

[mulefool]

Over the years I've seen alot more broken Ralide trees than rawhide covered wood. Also the bars don't have as much bearing surface as most good rawhide covered wood trees, either. I'm not sure I would feel too bad about one in a pony or kids saddle, but for anything that is really used at all, I'm with the traditional tree. Chris

[saddles]

It all depends on what you are doing with them. I have found the seats in some of them to be more comfortable than alot of the big, wide ropers out there. They tend to get brittle with age though, and are subject to temperature change. They either fit a horse or they don't. The best thing about them is they make several specialty trees that are hard to find. It's also relatively inexpensive to replace them when they do break since they have never changed the patterns. There are several knock offs of these trees out there as well, and they are WAY worse then the originals. We used to build a production saddle for Weaver Leather a few years ago. We built around 1,000 saddles on the Ralide trees. We use a stainless steel pan head sheet metal screw on them with great success. The screw melts right into the plastic as you run it in. Now after that screw has been taken out a few times for repairs and such, you may need to retap it or use a longer screw. Also, the only time we have seen the bars tails broken off is when they have had string holes drilled all the way through them. They can and do hold up to several years of riding, but you have to have the type of tree for the activity you have chosen. A barrel/pleasure tree was not designed to rope out of for instance, you just can't get that through some peoples heads

Lacey

[greg gomersall]

Ralide builds trees they bill as roping trees but thier warrenty states subject to normal use and to them roping is not considered normal use for a saddle. Kinda hard to collect on that kind of wording. do ypurself and your horse a favor and ride bareback till you can afford something better. Greg

[saddles]

I'm not debating the right or the wrong of them, just telling you what I know from working on and building on alot of them. I'm sure everyone would love to own a custom saddle built especially for their horse, but the truth is that's not going to happen for alot of people. You have to know how to deal with them (ralide trees) when they come to you for repairs, fit problems, etc. because there are more out there then we all care to admit.Would I recommend one? Yes and no. Depends on the circumstances. Trail riding, yes. Roping, no. In my opinion there are even worse super cheap rawhide covered wood trees out there.

Lacey

Edited January 22, 2009 by saddles

[greg gomersall]

kind of misleading to advertise them as a roping tree when they turn around and say roping is not normal use for a saddle tree when something goes wrong. Fecal matter is still fecal matter no matter how you package it. Greg

[saddles]

Everyone's entitled to their opinion...

[gloomis]

It didn't take much to pop this one off.

[saddles]

Are you sure this is off a Ralide brand tree, or is it a knock off? By the pictures of the horns I'm seeing in my catalog there's no way, unless it's pretty old, that it is a Ralide. There are several companies out there that are using various brands of injected molded trees, somehow the Ralide company gets to take the blame for all of them.

Lacey