Back On The Saddle - A Decade Later

Remember that time 10+ years ago when I started working on my first leather saddle?

I had done a few posts about it here, like this one where I had cut all of the pieces out.  Also, this one where I did, probably, the biggest upgrade that will be done on it, stepping up the stirrups.

Well, I've been working on it again.  I was guessing it had been 10 years (possibly more) since I had worked on it and apparently, according to this blog, I was right.

Here's how it looked when I set up to work on it again last night:

Those clothespins have been on there all this time.  To Japan and back, and through several other moves.

I think these parts are thoroughly glued together now.

So... why go back to it now?

I have been both excited and intimated by the idea of making saddles.  Over the years I've sort of danced around them, making many saddle stands and saddle pads... but no saddles.  I've continued to study saddles, collect references and dream, but that was it.

Interestingly, I've now done a LOT of work with leather - mostly strap goods (bridles, halters, harness work, and so on).  When I started this saddle, it was my very first big, "real" (leather) project.  It was... as I said, exciting and scary. 

Last month, in early September, I made my first "serious" go at showing performance, which is something I could easily write a few posts about - and I hope to!  I went with the goal of showing one horse in every performance class and I just about pulled it off (choosing to skip a few classes toward the end, to put more time into my biggest entry).

As you might guess, to pull that off, I needed saddles.  And so, harnessing the power of last minute, I did show with 5 saddles that I made.  Or, almost made.  I'm not sure I consider them finished, but anyhow, I did it!  

I ran the gauntlet of English saddles,

a Western saddle (which was the most unfinished of them, but I went for it anyway),

and an "other saddle", for Endurance. 

After all of that, saddles felt less scary.  Surely if I made several mini scale saddles in short time, I could handle that old Traditional scale western saddle I'd started?

Another motivator is that I have been working hard on my Etsy shop over the last month, clearing some of the logjam of things I've made that need to be photographed and listed to sell.  Last week the batch of photos and listings that I worked on was a bunch of saddle pads.  Again I thought, it'd be nice to have a saddle to show them off with.  

So, I dug out ye olde started saddle and here we are.

I picked up right where I left off, on the cinches.  I fished gluing on the liners and attached the connector strap between them.  I also pinched the holes in the billets, grabbed a horse, and cinched up what I had for the first time!  (that was pretty dang cool)

I do remember that I hit a snag in the kit instructions that derailed me and, well... 10 years have gone by.  I DID find, what I felt were, much better instructions for that part at some point and so I did get a piece of it done, with no record of when or where that happened.  That piece was the front half of the tree.

I did go a bit farther with assembly last night; I attached that front piece to the lower skirt and I also attached the stirrup fenders.  Oh, and I glued the cantle support  piece onto the back of the cantle.  Next up is putting the back half of the tree on, then the upper skirt, seat..  and so on.  

As usual, for me, I'm already thinking about future possibilities.  In the last 10 years I've learned a lot about working with leather, including a bit about stamping, carving, and tooling.  When I started it, I had really wanted to make this saddle fancy in some way, but had decided to leave it plain.  I'm already pondering what I might do on the next one... I've also acquired some exciting tool in the last 10 years, like the elusive Rio Rondo basket weave stamp.  

It feels good to be working on an OLD project again. 

Maybe I'll get out the stagecoach again sometime soon - ha!