overkill on a tree

[Mike Craw]

Hey Pella!

If I understand your post correctly, the term "trip" in common usage means to stumble or miss your step. As with many other words in the English language, there may be no obvious reason why Americans from different parts of the US use a word in a particular way. To make matters worse, many of us use the same word differently from folks in other regions of our same country!

I can't imagine what folks on this board from other countries, who didn't grow up speaking our brand of English, must be thinking

Mike

[Steve Brewer]

I can see the double rawhidecover,But rawhide is tougher than fiberglass.I would think that the Two layers of rawhide will make the tree strong enough.With that said,you have to go with what the customer wants

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Our stand has always been that with good wood (type and construction) you will never need more than one layer of decent thickness rawhide for a normal working tree. And this tree falls under "normal working use" in our terminology. I am attaching a picture of dried rawhide. The measured one is a normal full thickness bull hide, where the term bull hide applies to the full thickness skin off a mature (age makes a difference), male bovine as opposed to a specific thickness of split rawhide. (You cannot buy rawhide that has not been split, and the thinnest piece in our picture is as thick or thicker than any production rawhide we have seen.) The next thickness would be what we would use on an order like this, knowing how hard he would use the saddle. The extra thick one IS overkill. And double rawhiding is overkill IF you use quality rawhide.

I remember one phone call. It started with "I have an equipment tester for you." This maker had replaced three trees in guy's saddle in the last few years. So we used a really heavy hide on the tree. It wasn't as pretty as some - extra hide thickness rounds the bar edges more, etc – but it was stout. We've heard a couple good wreck stories since about that saddle, including a big horse flipping over backwards on a concrete pad, but the tree is intact. That was over 10 years ago.

And Keith is right. The tree maker should compensate in the wood for the thickness of covering he is expecting to use so the seat length comes out right.

But, if you are looking at the rawhide simply as a reinforcement to the fiberglass, that is another ballpark and we aren't players in that game.