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Getting to The Lasts...

Posted by RodandDenise on July 4, 2016

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

2016 July 4 1 getting to the last saddle trees.jpg

Like we said last November, this has been a long winter of goodbyes, as one by one we have made The Last tree for individual customers, some of whom we have been supplying trees to for twenty years. But now we are getting down to the final few trees, and we are hitting some of The Last times we are doing certain parts of the job.

2016 July 4 2 last batch of rawhide made.jpg

For instance, I have made The Last trip to H and M Meats in Grande Prairie who have supplied us with hides for the past eighteen years, and picked up The Last of the hides to make into rawhide. And Rod has made up The Last batch of rawhide…

2016 July 4 3 cut up and frozen last time.jpg

And a few days later he, for The Last time, used the handy dandy patented hide hanging apparatus as he cut up and packaged The Last few trees worth of rawhide.

2016 July 4 4 last page of hieroglyphics.jpg

I wrote up The Last page of miniature hieroglyphics which I use to tell me what numbers of what types and sizes of wood I need to cut out for the trees coming up.

2016 July 4 4a last recording of specs.jpg 2016 July 4 4b from 1999.jpg

And because I am not neurotic, for The Last time I filled out my record of the pieces I needed to glue up. Amazing how many pages you can keep in the cover of this folder. The records there go all the way back to 1999…

2016 July 4 5 last wood cut out.jpg

So I marked, cut and planed the wood for The Last remaining trees.

2016 July 4 6 last of the baltic birch.jpg

In the fall I had roughly figured out the number of trees we still had to build and purchased enough wood to made them, but I hadn’t figured in the number of student trees we ended up having built from that wood as well. While there is some extra of most types of wood we use, this is The Last of the Baltic Birch. That’s cutting it a tad close…

2016 July 4 7 last thicknessing.jpg

After I had them all planed, Rod and I thicknessed wood together for The Last time.

2016 July 4 8 last set of bars gluing.jpg

So I have now glued up The Last set of bars

2016 July 4 9 last cantle gluing.jpg

And The Last cantle

2016 July 4 10 last fork gluing.jpg

And The Last fork…

But I haven’t got them all marked out yet!!

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