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!

Ranger Saddles

Two posts in one day! How exciting!
Today I finally made myself sit down and start working on actual tack. My cosplay blog has been getting all the love lately as I'm trying to get a few projects ready for a convention in March...but tack must also be made!

As it happens, I have had five Ranger saddles (aka Scrap Leather Saddles) in my project box for quite a while. They were pretty close to finished...

 

But still required a lot of time-consuming gluing

 

Aside from cinches, I got the two black ones finished. 

I'm using a different saddle horn than I used to, but it's a bit faster and tidier than the method I had before. I've started to simply make a small hole in a strip of leather, and use a black bead as the horn, pushing one end through the hole. It looks odd but it's effective, and cuts down the time and frustration.

These saddles will be for sale as soon as they are completed.