Old and New...ish.

I had the opportunity this past week to visit a local museum. There were saddles in the basement! There wasn't much lighting, and the only camera I had was my cellphone, but I tried to get what reference photos I could. This saddle was small, but it had a really deep seat. The stirrups were missing. It didn't have any info on it, but it did have a rifle case.

There was also a tree...

And several sidesaddles from the 1800s!

 

I may go back sometime and take my real camera.

The other thing that I did is visit an antique store. There was some tack there, too. Mostly stuff that was beyond hope of repair. I found a white mechanical hackamore that looked pretty gnarly, and a presentation halter with silver. But what I took home was a humble-looking dirty leather halter.

 Which turned into a nice, clean, fairly decent and barely-used-looking leather halter!

Overall, it was a pretty good day!

English Saddle

I've had a "bee in my bonnet" for a while now to try making another English saddle again. It's been several (years?) since I last tried, and I've gotten a lot more comfortable working with leather and looking at reference pictures. I found an old pattern that a friend of mine had sent me (no instructions though) and sat down with some old leather jacket scraps and skiver, and went to town.

Two days of puzzle assembly later, this is what I had made.

I made a ton of mistakes and it's far from perfect, but I learned a lot! I think I'm finally on the right track. That old scrap leather actually doesn't look too bad!