Time to stop lurking and introduce myself

[wyldflower]

Hello everyone!

I've been lurking around the past couple of weeks, and thought it was time to introduce myself. My name is Dixie, and I live not too awful far from Portland, Oregon. I have learned an amazing amount from surfing on this site, and my heartfelt thanks to all of you folks, from brand-spankin newbie to seasoned artisan for your posts. I've already learned a bunch from you all, and feel I've barely dug in.

I've done a little bit of leatherwork and tooling - a few belts and other small items, though it's been a few years since I've done anything more complicated than shortening a strap or adding a buckle lol. I've always wanted to make horse gear, so I'd like to start with making bridles and perhaps breast collars and saddle bags, working my way up to making saddles. To my eye, whether english, western, australian or something else, any well-designed, well-made saddle is a work of art. And if it is well-fitted to the horse, well then, you have just pure poetry.

Speaking of saddles, I'm very interested in learning more on how traditional and crossover Australian saddles are made, so if anyone can point me to some good resources accessible to a Yank it would be much appreciated! I recently bought a used Toowoomba Saddlery campdrafter poley. Since I really like riding in the saddle, it's probably better that I don't tear it apart to see inside.

Although I'm most interested in horsegear, I do have a nifty little 2006 Honda Rebel that I learned to ride on last year, so I might have to make that first set of saddle bags for the bike!

Ok, better get off the pc and finish setting up my leatherworking space and go shopping for supplies (thanks to this site I know what to get!) so I can get started.

Thanks for reading and I promise to post with project progress!

Dixie

[Greybeard]

Welcome wyldflower! a LOT of Good People Here And a ton of Knowledge...

[Wyvern]

to the forum WYLDFLOWER!

[TomSwede]

Welcome to the board Wyldflower!!

You certainly came to the right place if you want to learn more. People here are allways nice and helpful so if you have any questions, just pop 'em!

Tom

[Denise]

Welcome to the forum!

Regarding the Aussie and cross over saddles, a couple members you can contact from here are Dennis Lane and David A Morris who build them, including the trees, in Australia. Here is a link to Jeremiah Watt's blog from June 2007. Scroll down to the June 4th entry and you can see a couple of Dennis's trees - one more traditional Aussie and one a "Western stock" tree. Always something more to learn!

http://www.westernfolklife.org/weblogs/artists/watt/2007/06/

[wyldflower]

Greybeard, Wyvern, and TomSwede ~ thank you for the warm welcome!

Denise ~ Thank you so much for the link and info on contacting Dennis Lane and David A Morris through this site!

Dixie

[abn]

Dixie, welcome to the board. You've come to the right place to learn about building saddles -- we have a vibrant community of saddlemakers here who are willing to help out anyone with a question.

Good to have you here! -Alex