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

A bit ago we showed you pictures of a tree that had too narrow a bar angle to fit the horse it was sitting on. Here’s one that has way too wide an angle. So, can it be padded up to make it fit? The pictures tell the tale…

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 has already warmed us up once getting it home.

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 probably is...

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

So, now that you have had time to look at the pictures and decide what you would do differently with a tree to fit this horse, here’s our responses. Pictures are good, but they aren’t as good as seeing something yourself, and sometimes you still don’t really have good answers on some things. But here’s what we are thinking at this point.

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

Let's ask a skill testing question today…

A little bit ago a saddle maker who builds on our trees went out to see a new customer. He took one of our trees which he had on hand to try out on this guy's horses.

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

since I did an “around the shop today” kind of post, so here it is. I went out to the shop with the camera and just took some pictures of things, like Rod cutting out bars for the next set of four 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.

So once you figure out why you want to build saddle trees, and know that you are the kind of person who will be happy doing this, and have researched the kind of large equipment you need, you need to look at the smaller tools you will use in hand making saddle trees.  That’s what this post is about.

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

For someone who is serious about wanting to build saddle trees and who has the personal attributes necessary to be a tree maker, a big hurdle is often acquiring the equipment. We often tell people that this isn’t something you can do in your basement in the winter. It needs more space than that.

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 contact us about wanting to learn to build saddle trees, there are a few other things we want to learn about them besides just why they want to build trees. If someone is willing to come and pay us to teach them how to build trees, we want them to succeed at it. But not everyone who thinks they want to build trees for a living will be able to make it as a tree maker, so in the information we send out to them, one of the pages is a short self-assessment questionnaire. It has a few different categories of questions to help prospective tree makers figure out if they really are cut out to build saddle trees for a living. We also ask questions similar to these in our discussions to help us know more about the personal characteristics of a possible student.