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While I should be working on one of the saddles I've got in the works right now, I figured I
should take a break & work on another flyer to post around town since a lady at the FCA told me people have been asking
about bringing horses to me, & they no longer had my flyer posted there. I'm not always the easiest guy to get ahold of;
I don't go out, I usually don't have a phone, & I just don't talk much to very many people. And, this page is really just
a way to make people aware that I not only start colts & give riding lessons, but I also make damn near anything you might
need out of leather, rawhide, or horsehair!
As far as getting ahold of me goes though, you can email me, or you can catch me at Walmart
- I hate that place, but I'm there so much my mail gets delivered there now! (My attempt at humor after staying up all night
working on a fancy bridle.)
I'll include a pic of a couple Wade saddles I'm working on now. I paid for a regular business
web address, & I hope to have that up & running by the end of the summer. The url will be www.SmokeSaddlery.com & it will have everything you need right there to order a unique custom hand-made saddle for yourself. My base price
right now is $2,800 for either a rough-out, or smooth-out, saddle with no decor whatsoever - just a good comfortable saddle
that you can ride &/or work in. Of course, I can make your hobbles, chinks, bosal, stampede strings,hitched horsehair
items, or rodeo gear, etc. as well.
Until I get good enough with computers to build my own website (or rich enough to hire it out), I'll try my hand at you tube...
Following is a link to a You Tube account with a few short videos on saddle making & hitched horsehair. https://www.youtube.com/SmokeSaddlery
Clicking on this takes you directly to a discussion on the ground seat in a hand-made saddle.
| 2 regular Wade trees |
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| The Wade is, by far, the most popular saddle built today. |
The ground seat is in the 16" Wade with the Charro horn on the bottom, the cantle back is in,
skirting blocked, & rigging just started. The tree on top is a 15" Wade (both have a 9" swell) with a 3" post horn. The
16" tree will make a 15 1/2" finished saddle, & the 15" tree will have a 14 1/2" seat when covered. The smaller Wade will
also have Asian frog skin buck rolls (&, I'm still considering tapaderos).
| Lady's Ray Hunt Wade |
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| this one's gonna be fancy |
Apparently, this is too close for this camera... If you look, you can see a very thin strip of tin here though - it eventually
cut right through the stirrup leathers on this production saddle. The ground seat of this type of saddle is comprised of cheap
tin & a layer of cheap wool felt. The following picture shows what the rest of the saddle is made of too. There's not
even a single piece of saddle skirting leather on this saddle. You have thin tooling leather, & cheap suede - that's it.
The tin here wasn't even cut out to accomidate the stirrup leathers. Production saddles are put together as quickly, &
as cheaply, as possible.
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| The cheap tin shown here eventually cut thru the stirrup leathers. |
I have the seat pulled back here. You can see how the seat is made, & what they call a ground seat. My ground seats,
& ground seats in most custom hand-made saddles, starts with a 20 guage tin strainer on a well-built hand-made tree of
good wood, & 2 layers of heavy saddle skirting leather from the thickest part of the hide. If you can see it, this tree
is also covered in extremely thin rawhide (maybe goat), & quickly laced-up with no care for quality. Such a covering cannot
possibly strengthen the tree. Of course, this tree is very poorly constructed from poor material, & is obviously not hand-made.
You get what you pay for though. People nowadays seem to want to spend 50 grand on a big powerful pickup (even when they live
in town), but they want to ride a saddle worth less than a month's rent... There's just no figuring people today!
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| You get what you pay for. |
This cheap saddle is mine... Why? I get a lot of spoiled and/or abused horses, many of them intent on killing me, or
themselves, or any easy combination. Actually, most of the horses I get around here are like that. And, I can pick up a complete
used production saddle in a pawn shop for often less than I'd have to pay for the type of tree alone that I use in building
a custom hand-made saddle... or, the cost of leather (minus the tree, hardware, etc.). So, I use these kind of saddles for
starting colts & re-educating older horses. I could care less what happens to this type of saddle (provided I exit before
it happens). If you care about your horse's back, or your butt, or how you look, you should get a quality saddle though. The
one pictured above is ok for starting colts, but this isn't something you want to ride all day, or anywhere other horses will
see yours!
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| building a good ground seat |
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