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

When people discuss saddle fit and try to label trees or saddles to describe their fit, you can get into a real quandary. The old Quarter Horse, Semi-Quarter Horse and Full Quarter Horse labels are so inconsistent that they are not very useful. (We wrote about that before.) Now people like to talk angles, figuring that saying 90 degrees or 93 degrees will mean that all trees with that label will fit the same. Nope. T’aint so…

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 snapped some pictures around the shop this morning and realized that pretty much everything there was waiting for something. For example, the trees sitting under the bench are waiting to be dry enough to varnish...

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

the long goodbye…

Rod has spent a lot of time on the phone over the last week calling customers,

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

Yup, we’re still working around the shop. Just haven’t been taking the time to post pictures lately.

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

Is the allusion to a very old commercial showing my age? Anyway… We had a question recently from someone wanting to clarify the difference between crown, flare and relief. Since they are all terms relating to curves on the bottom of the bar, how do you differentiate them?

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

It really does seem like things come in groups. We make a fair number of wood post swell forks – about twenty percent or so of our total output – but they are a relatively new innovation in the long history of saddles. We don’t know for sure when they started to appear, but we were quite surprised to find the date of 1986 on an old tree we duplicated a while ago. Looking at the construction on that one, it is likely it was a very early model.

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

you look out at the shop in the morning...

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

Shortly after “the student” left, we took a week away. (I told you it was an intensive course! We needed a break…) Actually, we had been planning for a while to go visit Rod’s parents in southern BC since we hadn’t seen them for a while. It was a good visit, and while there Rod was able do some odd jobs to help them out, including rebuilding the stairs to their deck which were starting to rot. Thus, the background for the picture.

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

The last couple weeks of July we hosted Vern Rempel of VR Saddlery as we taught him how to build trees for his own saddles. Vern has been a long-time customer, having ordered the third tree Rod ever sold, and a longer term friend. He finally decided that he wanted to build his own trees. Any saddle maker we have talked with who builds his own trees has told us that it isn’t for financial reasons. The cost of equipment, setting up a tree shop and education, the learning curve needed, the time it takes to build a tree when you don’t build lots of them – all of these mean that even in the long run it is more economic to purchase trees than build your own.