Relining skirts

[mulefool]

Ever notice how the better the quality of saddle the easier it is to reline the skirts? I just finished taking one apart to reline. It is a trail type saddle built along the lines of a McClellan but to get the dang skirts off I had to pretty much take the thing completely apart. I had to remove the entire rigging, the back skirt plate that went over the top of the bar was stuffed up under the back cantle cover and I had to pry that up to get it off. On top of that they shot a couple dozen nails though the sheepskin into the middle of the bars after the skirts were on. I can't see where there was much reason for that, other than to frustrate me. Oh, plus they Barged the wool on. I've had some other saddles where they must line them up against a wall and fire staples at the skirts like a firing squad. Now that I'm done ranting, what do you charge for relines and do you size up a saddle and give a higher quote if you suspect it's going to be one of these? I usually charge $225 but when the customer brought this one in I said I thought there might be some extra labor and told him it could be as high as $350. I thought that was pretty outrageous and that I would end up charging less and we'd both be happy, but now I'm thinking maybe I should stick with it. I guess the thing that frustrates me the most is that THERE'S NO REASON FOR ALOT OF THIS. It wouldn't have been any harder to make the thing so it was easy to take apart. Well, guess I got that out of my system.