How are trees sized?

[jonwatsabaugh]

I can't speak for all custom makers, but I know as a tree maker, I'm interested in a very specific group of horses. All horses can be custom fitted, but many have conformation defects that will never allow them to carry a saddle and rider and distribute the weight properly. Many custom makers hesitate to fit what I would call the "out of spec" back because then you have an "out of spec "saddle. What are the chances you will find another horse to fit your custom saddle if Old Nellie steps in a hole and breaks a leg two days after getting your new saddle? You have a fair size investment in a piece of equipment that has just obtained decoration statis. I sure wouldn't want this rig ending up sittin' atop a good horse that's got a real job! Chances are the original owner is going to want to recoop their money and will take greenbacks from the first real offer they get, regardless of where it will end up and what it will be cinched to.

I get pretty stiff-necked about the irresponsible breeding practices I see. I believe in all cases that conformation, mind, and athletic ability should be incorporated in all breeding programs. I'm primarily interested in good Quarter and Thouroughbred types with proper structure. I understand many use their horses purely for pleasure, and thats great, but buy and breed good stock. If you gotta feed'em, you might as well be feeding a good one!

Jon

[hidepounder]

Jon,

You'll like this.....

In an interview, after winning another major race, race horse trainer Bob Bafford was asked what he fed.

He replied "...We feed better horses!..."

Edited January 6, 2009 by hidepounder

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Margaux,

You may be sorry you asked… And since it took me a long time to write it, others have chimed in since.

Is this all "art", or is there an objective procedure for determining the proper tree?

First, we started with good patterns and good teaching from the guy we learned from. "We are where we are because we stand on the shoulders of giants." Next, over the years we have done what people have done for centuries - put different sizes of our trees on a bunch of different horses and see how they fit. And the test of how well our decisions were made is how do they work when made into saddles? So between good teaching, years of observation, and feedback from our customers, we have learned empirically that this combination of measurements works well on this type of horse. When someone would send us back drawings, we would do the same thing - figure out which measurements fit best on the drawings in front of us by comparing the templates to trees we had on hand or to templates we had taken of horses we had seen and decided on fit. When Dennis's system came out, we took out his cards and our trees to a bunch of horses and compared: this horse, these numbers off the cards, this size of tree – and made the correlations. So we now know what measurements on our trees fit with a given combination of numbers off the cards. This is as objective as we can do at the moment, and the "art" to it is learning to see how the bare tree sits and know how it will work in actual use. (That said, Dennis's system is extremely helpful in being able to compare specifically and easily between horses and thus it helps us in seeing the differences better.)

I would like it made for my horse, not one kinda like him

.

If we are given back drawings or Dennis Lane system numbers, we don't build a tree for a horse "kinda like that". But we do build a tree for that "kinda" horse. Your horse has a basic body type that thousands of others out there (unless you have a very bizarre horse) also have and that type is what we work to fit. Dennis's system has just made it a whole pile easier to really know what type your horse is.

We had a customer drop by today to ask some questions, so we pulled our horse out of the pasture and started throwing different sized trees up on him. Now Gus has what we think of as a good back. A good back to a tree maker is one that is easy to fit – not too extreme in any direction – flat or round, wide or narrow and with a decent wither. It was interesting to see the diversity of tree sizes that would work on him, one being ideal and the others being workable ie. they didn't dig in anywhere and wouldn't interfere, but they had less surface area in contact with him than the ideal tree did. So, if we were asked to build a tree to fit his body type, would we randomly choose any of the ones we tried on today? No. We would build the ideal size. If your horse's body type is more extreme (and those muscular barrel shaped horses that are totally round everywhere are "extreme" even if they are common) then your options when "buying off the rack" are a lot more limited. But as a custom maker, we do the same thing for that horse as we would for our Gus – fit that body shape as ideally as we can. (And mutter under our breath about horses not being bred to carry saddles these days.)

I'm still interested in hearing from the tree makers to hear how they account for the pad and fleece and leather

Rod's short answer: Do we make calculations to account for this? No. Does that mean it is not accounted for in the bar patterns we use? No. The patterns do take this into account.

Denise's verbose answer: We understand what you are saying about the padding affecting the fit but honestly, unless it is excessive, we don't feel it makes enough of a difference that we have to change what we do about it. If you had a flat counter top and added 1" to it, the same flat tray would still fit on top. If you had two nestled dessert bowls and added an inch pad between them, it would affect how they fit together. A horse's shape is closer to the flat counter top than the dessert bowl, and the amount of difference a 1" pad makes on the relatively shallow curves on a horse's back is not significant if the correct allowances are made for relief at the start. What I am saying is that the basic bar patterns we start with takes into account the fact there will be skirts and sheepskin and reasonable padding under the bar. If we had our druthers, the maximum pad thickness would be an inch. If you have a good fitting tree with adequate surface area already, we don't feel you need more than that. The people who have their 2 – 4 inches of padding are negating the fit of the tree. It would be like ordering custom boots but telling the guy you want to wear 8 pairs of socks inside them. He isn't going to need to be very exact in making the boot because all those socks obliterate the curves in the foot.

You are correct in that honestly, we don't often ask about padding when we build a tree (unless they are in a discipline that tends to overpad as a rule). Some saddle makers will tell us "this guy really pads up a lot" and then we sit and discuss how unnecessary it is and how it wrecks the fit of a good saddle. And we may make the fit a bit larger than we normally would for the type of horses the guy usually rides. But the people who use 4" of padding are not usually going to be going for Dennis's system either. And – opening a huge can of worms – the type of pad used is just as important as, if not more important than, the thickness in how it affects fit. And neither thickness nor type do we have any control over, and they WILL change with most of the riders out there. But if someone wants to be specific and give us that information, that's great. (If they want to listen to our suggestions, we like that even better. )

Building a saddle tree isn't like tapping a hole for a 3/32"" screw in metal where you can get an exact fit. A lot of the problems people have experienced come from using poorly designed saddles. They don't know how well a properly designed saddle works, so they look for that elusive "perfect fit" with all sorts of methods and (sorry to say) gimmicks. There is so much movement of the horse under the saddle, and so many other factors that affect how the saddle fits that we really feel there is a place called "good enough", and there isn't a place called "perfect". Not for more than a few seconds anyway. So we don't feel it is a cop out to say "good enough". That means GOOD – low PSI under all every part of the bar in contact with the horse – and ENOUGH - aiming for perfection in a constantly changing system is like grabbing at clouds. If cowboys can ride these things for hours at a time over all sorts of terrain on one horse, rope and doctor a bunch of sickies, including mature animals, and bring their horses home without sore backs, we're happy. And that is what our customers tell us their customers tell them.

PS. We enjoy your sense of humor.

[Margaux]

R&D:

Sorry I asked? Hell no, this is getting me close to where I'm trying to go! Thanks for your replies.

SittingUpHigh1:

(is there a sittinguphigh2?) You understand perfectly. I can see that from your comment about wither pocket. It seems to this inexperienced writer, that if the tree fits around the wither perfectly, when the pad/leather/fleece go on, it's going to pinch.

I hear several people say "...close enough....". (eg. Bruce Johnson and Rod/Denise)

So I'm getting that trees have larger tolerances than I had expected. (Perhaps I should say here that I have made 0.0 saddles, and 0.0 trees, and have ordered 0.0 trees. I have put my rear in a bunch, but let's not go there...)

In my engineering/physics experience, tolerances are something to tolerated, but minimize.

I think I hear everyone saying "...horses move, and that movement distorts the back a whole lot, so let's not go crazy making it too good, since that is a waste of time."

Did I get that right? If so, that is what I was looking for.

I've gotten a lot out of Rod and Denise's last reply.

First I get that it is far more art than science. (from the comments about "teaching", "observation", "feedback" "empirically" etc). While all that is good, it is not "better" which is what I always hunt for.

Perhaps that is all there is today, and if so, that is the answer I was looking for.

I get from Rod and Denise that you basically treat the back more as a flat surface than a bowl, which tells me that padding isn't really taken into account much, and if so, that is the answer that I was looking for too.

There are some contradictions in the reply which means there is a high probability that there is something I'm not getting:

"Does that mean it (spacing for padding/fleece) is not accounted for in the bar patterns we use? No"

and

"...we don't feel it makes enough of a difference that we have to change what we do about it"

So you do and you don't? What am I misunderstanding here?

I think you basically don't take it into account much. Is that right?

I also don't understand how "The patterns do take this into account." Could you educate me on that?

My summary so far (fix me if I have this wrong):

Horses move, so getting a "perfect" fit is a waste of time. The tree should be good, and experience is the guide, and final judge. There are other tools, like DL's system, and that will augment the experience, but isn't used in an objective way.

Tree makers don't take the padding/fleece into account much, since it doesn't matter much.

Here, for the record are some (questionable) suggestions which would easily take padding into account:

When placing a bare tree on the horses back, why not put some little 1" * 1" *1" sticking things (plastic? wood? felt?) onto the trial tree to see how the tree is going to fit in the end?

Or, hold the tree up 1" to see if there are 1" gaps everywhere normal to the surface? (too much "art" for my taste...)

Or, Dennis Lane's cards could come with inverse cards which are a "positive" (the same as the horse's back) but have 1" or 2" padding gap built in, so the tree maker could place those in a stand which holds them the appropriate distance apart, and the trial tree should fit just right onto that. The system could also be refined in several way to eliminate the cards (which would make it more universally accessible) and still be communicated through email. I have some ideas about that.

Or, have thermal set plastic softened, place that on the horses back to set up (there are plastics whose pliability varies drastically around 120 degrees F (BTW, there is still no temperature here in Colorado yet) ) and then put 1" sticky cubes in 20 spots on the blank, and fit the tree to that.

If people could point out why these ideas a NOT good, I think it would help me understand where my gaps in understand are.

That would be great.

Thanks for the info in the replies.

Best to all,

Margaux

[greg gomersall]

Margaux the reason you do not have to take the leather sheepskin and padding into the equation of wether or not the bare tree fits is that the angles do not change when you add them. If a 90 degree bar tree fits your horse properly as a bare tree then it will fit your horse properly covered. Yes the leather narrows it up a little all the way along the bottom side But it also raises it up the same amount at the same time so Your Angles Stay The Same. Over padding will ruin this fit but adequete padding will not. Hope this helps. Greg

[Margaux]

Greg,

I think that perhaps you don't understand the geometry of the situation.

Several others and I have pointed out why pads do affect the fit in previous posts.

Here is a picture which should help: (not great art work, I admit...)

I have not change the size or shape of the "tree" or the "horse" in the upper and lower drawings. I just added padding to the lower one.

Notice that in the lower picture, the saddle does not fit with the 1/2" pad I drew. Or the pad has to be crushed in some places, and not even touching in others. Either way, not a good fit any longer.

It would be worse with a 1" pad of course.

Your assertion is only correct, as R&D point out, on a flat table.

The next conversation, which is how much does it matter, I concluded that the answer is: "not enough to bother with". (okay, that's a run-on sentence.....)

But clearly padding does affect and change the fit.

Hope that helps.

Margaux

[jonwatsabaugh]

Margaux,

I see what you mean by your drawing, however your illustration representing the tree bar is incorrect. The front bar pad can never be concave. It is always slightly convex to flat, depending on the maker. Making the front bar pad concave would violate Rod & Denise's rule #1. Even with heavily muscled shoulders that are convex, you will never be successful in mating this profile with an opposing concave one. Greg is correct in his statement when considering a more standard whither type. This has been a good discusion!

Jon

[greg gomersall]

Marguax the edges of a tree bar are beveled off or rounded off a hair they are not square as your theory presumes and if your padding does not conform to the shape of your horses back you need to re-examine what type of padding you are using. Also in your picture after printing it out and doing some cutting and comparission its funny how the shape used in the top drawing does not match the one on the bottom, if you are not comparing apples to apples it is not a accurate comparisson.

We run into this same type of thing with people who seem to think that in order to get the fork and horn sitting closer to the horses back that the gullet needs to be widened to allow everything to sit lower when in reality what they need to do is have the fork made lower in the gullet to achieve this, with the primary gullet height measurement being the back at the handhole not the front lip. This whole thing can get quite complicated and for years we have been looking at it in the wrong way due to articles and information that has been passed down that was flawed to begin with. Greg

Greg,

I think that perhaps you don't understand the geometry of the situation.

Several others and I have pointed out why pads do affect the fit in previous posts.

Here is a picture which should help: (not great art work, I admit...)

I have not change the size or shape of the "tree" or the "horse" in the upper and lower drawings. I just added padding to the lower one.

Notice that in the lower picture, the saddle does not fit with the 1/2" pad I drew. Or the pad has to be crushed in some places, and not even touching in others. Either way, not a good fit any longer.

It would be worse with a 1" pad of course.

Your assertion is only correct, as R&D point out, on a flat table.

The next conversation, which is how much does it matter, I concluded that the answer is: "not enough to bother with". (okay, that's a run-on sentence.....)

But clearly padding does affect and change the fit.

Hope that helps.

Margaux

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Margaux,

Your picture explains perfectly why we don’t “mirror image” a fit. I am in no way disparaging your thinking or yourself, but honestly, it is the people who have the least experience with real trees and real horses that are most concerned with making a mirror image fit. Here is a thread about the plastic mold for the back. http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=519 (I like the “which side of the mold do you want me to fit?” quote.) Believe me, there are systems galore out there that have tried to do this. Peg boards and angle gauges and calculations, etc. etc. What a lot of people don’t understand is that these things HAVE been taken into account in the design of the tree. When you spend a lot of time alone in the shop carving wood or leather, you have lots of time to THINK. And we do! None of these questions or ideas are new, but they cause confusion for people. This forum gives us a place to try to explain, as best we can, why we do what we do the way we do. Then it is up to the reader.

Here is a picture of 90 degree angles over each other. It doesn’t matter how high you go, they still always fit on each other. They just get higher and higher (and more unstable) compared to the lowest one.

Here is a picture of the front of one of our trees.

You are not looking at in inwardly curving surface as your drawing shows. You are looking at an angle with curves in it. This tree will sit higher or lower on a horse depending on their width (and the volume of padding) but it won’t dig in at the bottom as your picture shows because of the relief built into the edges as part of the design of the bar. If the angle is wrong, THEN you can run into problems. (This is where Dennis’s system helps us know, not guess, the shape we are fitting.) But the padding doesn’t change the angle.

Here is a picture of the back of one of our trees. Same thing.

Here are two pictures (tried to get them as close as possible in the picture. Not perfect, but good enough? ) of the back bar pads of the tree pictured above lined up on a D8 (wide) pattern at the C position drawn from Dennis’s cards. This is the fit we would choose for this size horse. The first on is from the card itself.

This one is from a line drawn an inch (measured!) above the original drawing.

Now you may look at that and say “But it is barely contacting! The bottom edge sticks out into space and the top is nowhere near the horse.” etc. etc. But now add some weight to this saddle. Muscle is soft and compresses. Padding compresses too. That tree, when ridden, will contact with most of its surface area but the edges still will not dig in. If you had it shaped so the tree matched closer to the drawn shape, when you put weight on it, or asked the horse to turn, those edges would cause problems. This is the “art” of the tree design. How much relief to build in and where.

I hesitated to put this up those last two pictures because people can copy the picture, fiddle with it in a computer program and then say “Well, I’d change it by 3.72 degrees so it would fit much better than that.” But, as everyone who is on here with much experience is saying, it doesn’t matter that much. The horse will gain and lose weight. The rider may weigh 90 lbs or 250 lbs. The padding will change, etc. etc. etc. The bottom line is – if the design of the bars is such that 1.) it doesn’t dig in anywhere and 2.) it gets as much surface area on the horse as possible, IT WILL WORK. And by work, I mean distribute the rider’s weight over as much surface area as possible and not create pressure points. It really is that basic.

[steve mason]

Margaux;

You have got some incredible advice with this post, I have been making saddles for almost 20 years and I have learnt quite a bit here, when experts like those who have replied do so,I listen, then I can learn, you have questioned which is a good way to learn but you must be prepared to listen to the answers you get from the experts.

in regards to your drawing and the question of how padding affects trees, reread Greg's original post he explains it well, the angles stay the same the tree just is higher. I have done a quick sketch on a light board so the tree image and the horse image are exact between the two drawings, the proportions and angles are not accurate because this is just a quick sketch but it does get the point across.

when I get a potential customer who wants me to build them a saddle for their one horse I tell them I can build them a saddle that will fit that type of horse and will not be micro fitted to a single horse since there is and never will be a way to make a tree fit a horse perfect since the horses back will always change depending age and condition, if the potential customer still wants a tree made to fit their exact horse, they obviously do not respect my abilities as a saddle maker so I will not make them a saddle, I solve the problem before it is created and I send them packing.

Steve