We are no longer building saddle trees, but we have two videos about how Western saddles fit horses available on our westernsaddlefit.com website.

We are enjoying our time at the Artisan's show at the Heritage Ranch Rodeo in Edmonton. The finals are tonight, so if any one is in the area, come on down!!  I won't have time to do any long blog posts this week, so I was really glad when we received this picture this morning.  It gives me something quick to write about, and answers a question we get from our customers every now and then.

We are no longer building saddle trees, but we have two videos about how Western saddles fit horses available on our westernsaddlefit.com website.

Well, Saturday we are headed south to Edmonton.  We have been invited again this year to participate in the Artisan's show during the Heritage Ranch Rodeo during Farmfair.  We'll be there all day Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, along with a great group of saddle makers, silver smiths, braiders, and maybe more.  We sure enjoyed it last year and are looking forward to this year's show.

We are no longer building saddle trees, but we have two videos about how Western saddles fit horses available on our westernsaddlefit.com website.

very, very slowly...

We are no longer building saddle trees, but we have two videos about how Western saddles fit horses available on our westernsaddlefit.com website.

One of the more boring but very useful items in our shop is the bench we use to varnish the trees.  It is there day after day, just sitting - lonely - in its special spot - waiting to be used...

We are no longer building saddle trees, but we have two videos about how Western saddles fit horses available on our westernsaddlefit.com website.

I'm finishing up here on the short series comparing saddle fit between English and Western saddles.  After looking at the history and basic design of both types of trees, I moved on to the first few of the commonly taught saddle fit "rules".  There was some common ground with most of those ones.  Today I'm writing about the last of the commonly taught "rules", some of which just don't apply to Western saddles, and maybe not even to English ones.  (Warning - saddle fit “rule” heresy coming up...)

We are no longer building saddle trees, but we have two videos about how Western saddles fit horses available on our westernsaddlefit.com website.

I took these pictures on Monday evening, planning to put up a quick post that evening.  Here it is late Friday and I am finally getting the chance to work on the post.  Yup, sometimes life gets busy and goes like that.  I have lots of ideas of other posts I want to write, series I want to finish, etc...  But for now, here's some trees to look at.

We are no longer building saddle trees, but we have two videos about how Western saddles fit horses available on our westernsaddlefit.com website.

I finally got around to labelling a bunch of pictures of trees we have built over the last few weeks.  While we have been doing a fair number of Wades (as per normal), we have also had a few more swell forks thrown in lately.  So I thought I would just show you pictures of a few trees.

We are no longer building saddle trees, but we have two videos about how Western saddles fit horses available on our westernsaddlefit.com website.

Last time I discussed the basic anatomy of the longissimus dorsi muscle.  Now I need to go over the last few muscles I plan to talk about in this series.  Since they work either along with, or antagonistic to, the longissimus dorsi, I figured I should go over them before I talk about movement of the spine.

We are no longer building saddle trees, but we have two videos about how Western saddles fit horses available on our westernsaddlefit.com website.

Another major piece of machinery which gets lots of use in our shop is our combination jointer/planer machine.  I (Denise) actually use it more than Rod does since a main part of my job is taking the rough lumber and turning it into various types of laminated chunks of wood.  So we need something to smooth first one side of the wood, which is called jointing if you are this side of the Atlantic and surfacing if you are on the other side of the Atlantic.  But if you just smooth both sides, you may end up with a smooth, wedge shaped piece of wood.  So you need to get them smooth and an even thickness, which is called planing or thicknessing, depending on where you live.  We need something fairly wide for some parts of the job and to get both a jointer and a planer that are 12" wide we would need a bigger shop since they are industrial sized machines.  So we have a combination machine which has worked well for us instead.