Are you still building trees?
We are no longer building saddle trees. We have two saddle fit videos available on our westernsaddlefit.com website. Western Saddle Fit - The Basics, aimed at riders, is available either on DVD or streaming on Vimeo while the six hour series Well Beyond the Basics, aimed more for professionals but understandable by anyone, is available by streaming on Vimeo. (We left this website up because we have had many requests to keep the information available.)
We had a question a few days ago from an old customer. He was wondering if we were still building trees as he knew we were shutting things down. The answer - yes, we are shutting things down and yes, we are still building. The key is the time line. The shop will close at the end of July and we will be finishing out our orders by then. But until then, we are still making trees, so I thought I would show you some of what has been going on in the shop, as I have been sadly remiss in that lately…
This past two weeks, Rod has been teaching our last student to build trees. While we have offered our course for many years, it is only during the last couple that anyone has decided to take it. Sean is number five.
And it seems it doesn’t matter whether it is May…
or September - they learn to make rawhide in the snow… (Good thing Harry had the beard to keep him warm that day.) (And yes, we did let the January and February students make their rawhide inside...)
Between student’s trees and ours, the drying stones have been fuller again lately.
We have also been making some fun trees. We have made exposed wood horn caps as last trees for a few makers, so have had a few of these “silver horn caps” drying around the place.
Here is one that we epoxied to the fork...
and how it turned out. It is a 4 ¼” Jarrah wood horn cap.
This is a beautiful horn cap made out of Brazilian Imbuia supplied by the customer. Fancy woods are so gorgeous!
We’ve also shipped out two more of these Western Stock (Aussie) saddle trees with different knee pad configurations than we have made before, as per the customer’s request.
And yes, there are still more to go…
