First Saddles (Pictures)

[TracyMoss]

Seeing Don's first saddle got me interested in seeing peoples first saddles. Lets see them if you have pictures. If they are in paper format and you have a scanner add them too. Maybe we'll get to see a collection of saddles, and give some inspiration to all those first timers out there. No matter who you are, we all had to build that first one, and it wasn't always pretty.

Here is a picture of my first Saddle. A 16 inch S.F. Bowman ( typical roper ) FQH, Arizona Bars, padded seat, cheyenne roll, in-skirt rigging.

[Don101]

good topic Tracy and nice saddle very ornate and i bet it was a hard one to do with the carving on the fork, i wasnt comfortable with the seat carving on mine as i couldnt turn it around like i was used to doing, Don

[Spider]

Wow, maybe it's the size of the thing or just the design but saddles are freak'n nice.

Here is a picture of my first saddle on a different type of horse...lol

[bruce johnson]

Tracy,

Neat idea. This is my first solo. Association roughout. I still see it now and again. Like when it fell off the flat bed and the gooseneck tires got the off fender. Still out there working for a living, owned by a guy who takes care of nothing.

[TracyMoss]

Bruce,

what type of leather id you use on that one, I only ask because of the color. Not trying to turn this into a which leather is best thread. Even so , I'm probably going to regret asking. Nice draw-down, I thought I would get ambitious and make my first one out of Red Oak, the S*B weighs a ton. Better isn't always better if you know what I mean.

[craftsman827]

This is a good topic. I've been working with leather on & off for the last 35 years.

I started very young, lol !

I always wanted to make (build) a saddle.

Maby with seeing all these first time saddles, I'll give it a shot.

BUT, WHERE do I start. Al Stolhman books ??

[TracyMoss]

They are a good start, I never used them myself. I hounded an old Mininite saddle maker for years growing up. He was a very valuable resource. Then I worked at a saddle shop in Texas and gained even more knowledge. I did have an old TSTI manual, for those who are not aware, this is were Jeremiah Watt went to school. The manual was never in a retail production, it was more of a class manual, not intended for public use.

[Rusty]

attachment=6789:Handcrafted_Saddle.jpg]

'm brand new to this forum, and this is the first post I've read. I'm posting a photo of a saddle I made some years back - don't recall if it was the very first one or not, but thought I'd put 'er up here anyway. The thing at the bottom says the upload was successful, so it should show.

Rusty

Edited February 5, 2008 by Rusty

[bruce johnson]

Tracy,

We are going to strike out all the way around on my first saddle. The tree was by Jim Parry. No longer with us. The leather was the Caldwell-Moser when they were in Indiana, gone too. The color came from Tandy ProDye, no longer with us, and mixed with neatsfoot oil. The drawdown was actually made from used concrete forms, and it was replaced last spring by one of Ron Edmond's hydraulic stands. The only thing I still have is that saddle blanket under it.

[Mike Craw]

My first saddle was my daughter's wedding present. I started helping Carlos out in his saddle shop in December of '05, right after I retired, doing some tooling on Christmas presents. After we worked through the backlog, I started doing repair work on saddles. I had already read the Stolhman series and the articles written by Pete Gorrell in the Leather Crafters Journal, but doing repair work was a great education in itself about what worked and what doesn't. In February of '06, Carlos asked me if I didn't want to build that saddle I was talking about for Patty. I said yes, but the wedding is May 20th, is that going to be enough time? He said "plenty of time"... not! We went to saddle week in Sheridan in May and got back one week before the wedding. The skirts weren't sewed, the seat wasn't tooled, the stirrups weren't covered..."plenty of time."

Well, I barely made it, but she loved it.

[TracyMoss]

Pretty nice wedding present. I can't remember one thing I received, or at least who gave it to me. Interesting, I've never seen a padded seat put in that way. See, even I can learn something from someone else's first saddle. Good Job, you were pretty ambitious to dye that background on the first one.

[oldgringo]

Pretty nice wedding present. I can't remember one thing I received, or at least who gave it to me. Interesting, I've never seen a padded seat put in that way. See, even I can learn something from someone else's first saddle. Good Job, you were pretty ambitious to dye that background on the first one.

Here are two pictures of my first saddle, built in '05 for my daughter's 16th birthday. I posted this when I joined the forum last year but it may have been lost in the crash of '07. I started the saddle in '03 to give it to her when she was 14, but the saddler I was learning under rightly diverted me to producing all things leather - as far as cowboying goes. So it took a while. She's not ridin' much anymore so when I ride her horse (pictured) I use it 'cause it fits him well. I've roped a lot of calves, cows and a bull or two and it's still holding up. So I attribute that to my teacher. You know I don't see the pics. in the preview. Hope they came through.

OG

Edited March 2, 2008 by Johanna
reduced pic size

[bebah]

This is my first saddle. Still not quite finished. I am planning to do a fully carved Wade when I finish this one.