order right & left skirting sides?

[Squilchuck]

I've made two saddles but have not figured out the reason for ordering both right and left skirting leather sides vs. two sides from the same side of the cow.  Enlighten me, please!  --John

[bikermutt07]

I'm also interested.

[Thor]

17 hours ago, Squilchuck said:

I've made two saddles but have not figured out the reason for ordering both right and left skirting leather sides vs. two sides from the same side of the cow.  Enlighten me, please!  --John

Where did you get that info from John?

[JLSleather]

I'm not getting it, either.  I'm not sure how you would know, actually.  I can see the benefit (NEED) for having sides from the same tannery batch, but from the same cow  ...

From the same run should give you consistent color (as much as is possible).  Only thing that would be gained by getting both sides from ONE hide is perhaps buying the full hide (not cut into sides) which may give a little better "cutting economy".

 

Edited December 24, 2016 by JLSleather

[Big Sioux Saddlery]

I don't think the OP is saying from the SAME cow, but a right and a left as opposed to two lefts or two rights (hence, the same side of cow). And honestly, I never have ordered or cut leather that way.  I cut my pieces where I can get them out of, and I never order just two or three sides for one build.  I've heard guys say they order matching right and left sides and cut the right side pieces from the right side hide, and left side pieces from the left hand side of the hide. (Did that just get confusing?)  But, like I said, I cut them from where it makes sense and works, not necessarily any hard and fast rules.  Maybe if I had someone show me the "right" way to cut from matching sides, I'd change my methods, but so far nobody has shown me. If I try to cut right/right and left/left, sure as heck, one hide will have a blemish and mess up my whole method and I'll have to change everything around to make it work anyway.  When cutting up harness leather into straps, however, I do prefer to cut from a right hand side of a critter. That way I'm starting my cuts at the butt.  If I have a chunk left over of unused hide, I want it to be the neck/shoulder area. I can do the same from a left, but I have to flip the side upside down.

Actually, I'd welcome input into this myself.

[Matt S]

It makes a better fit for left-handed horses.

[TinkerTailor]

Yesterday I stopped into a local cobbler shop opened in 1959 and had tea with Rino, the 80 year old shoe maker owner . He is retiring, so I have taken every opportunity to pick his brain. He is legendary in the shoe industry, the stories he has are amazing....He once told me about a deal that fell through making Steven Tyler branded  running shoes after he made a few pairs of boots for Aerosmith and they liked them.  Yesterday he was telling me apparently the "newest innovation" in nike soccer cleats is laces on the side, which he invented in the 60's. .... Ironically yesterday he was just talking about laying out the pieces on a hide and how it is really the most important part of working with leather.  He told me the biggest problem with the young guys these days is they do not pay attention to which part of the hide the pieces come from and which direction they layed in the animal. Every part of a hide stretches different and shoes with pieces cut wrong will be crooked. Not paying attention to this means you will have much higher waste. Throwing out bad leather before it is clicked is cheaper than throwing out completed uppers because of an un-noticed flaw in the leather.

I could see where this idea could apply to saddles as well, If you have the shoulder on the front of the skirt on one side, and the butt on the front on the other, will the saddle stay symmetrical as it ages? Will the tooling look the same if it is on the butt on one side and the shoulder the other?  These may be inconsequential details, but it may also be that cutting from both sides of the animal is one of those secrets that separates a master from a craftsman. Even if it doesn't make a better saddle, It also may be worth a percent or two less waste per saddle. For a guy making one at a time this is very little, and not worth the hassle of keeping rights and lefts in stock and sorted. However in a large production shop paying attention to this 1 or 2 % could mean dozens or hundreds of hides a year.  Would not be the first time I have seen a "rule" that does not make sense in a one person shop, until you figure in economies of scale.

[Thor]

@TinkerTailor this is common practice in the saddle making business. At least it is with the good ones. Different areas stretch different or are thicker and stronger. Some areas are really just good for fillers and so on. However, this is limited to areas of a hide and they will not pull into a certain direction and definitely not to a point where a saddle would become unsymmetrical. 

There may be a good reason for using a right and a left side, but I'm not aware of it and I have never heard about. On the other hand I'm into leatherworking for only 2 1/2 years now.

[Squilchuck]

Yes, I meant ordering a right and left vs. two rights or two lefts or potluck - not from the same cow  Jeremiah Watt says in his saddle-making video that he orders 5 right and 5 left sides from HO then pairs them for color and size for a saddle. I have heard or read of ordering right-left sides elsewhere too. Yes, positioning your pattern on the hide to optimize stiffness or stretch etc. is critical for quality work, but I could lay out my right and left skirt patterns side by side in.a single side of leather (as JW does in the video) and get nearly similar pieces in terms of thickness and stiffness etc.   Still a puzzle!

[bruce johnson]

Ordering a right and left is pretty common in the saddlemaking business, and likely moreso in the smaller higher end one man shops than production making. Some of it is cutting for economy. Some of it is cutting a particular part for a particular section of the side to take advantage of the stretch or firmness characterisitcs of that section of the side. Saddles are three dimensional and some parts need to be firm, some need to compress, and some need to stretch. Different sections of a side tend to have different abilities to stretch or compress. Most saddlemakers have a layout pattern on the sides for cutting parts. Stirrup leathers need to be firm with minimal stretch. Some parts of the saddle need to have firmness in one part but moldable in another. The backs of skirts need to be firm to hold shape but the fronts can be a little more moldable to fit up tighter. Fenders need to be firm. These right and left pieces need to have the consistent characteristics. Cutting patterns can be flipped on right vs. left side and be in the same orientation on a side. Realizing that there are large single pieces like seats swell covers that you prefer to be "behave" symmetrically on the right vs. left side of the particular part, Big piece that you want to cut right the first time.  

A little tidbit. I was in a roundtable several years ago. One elder statesman of saddle making was talking about the old days in the reputation big shops. He had worked in some, and been taught by the generation before. In one of those shops for the really good orders, they cut the paired stirrup leathers from the right side. The reason was that on the living beast the rumen sits to the left. Through the course of the day and good grazing/poor grazing seasons the rumen expands and contracts. The lore of the day stood that the left side would be a little stretchier up high than the right side because of that.