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 we look at a horse in real life or look at pictures of horses that people send us, we don’t just look at the whole back and say “look at that whole back!” Just as there are Factors That Affect Tree Fit, we can break down the horse’s back into specific factors that we need to fit. We evaluate these individually and then put them all together to get a more accurate picture of the whole back. I can see this topic taking three posts to cover, so here’s part one.

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 still think this is the ugliest stage of a saddle tree - right after it is rawhided before the top of the rawhide gets dry. But it seems fitting that these trees are outside in the wind (no sun today) to see if they can get dried off a bit more quickly…

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 Rod is back working outside...

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 wood shelves in our shop are looking a little sparse at the moment…

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 week was a pretty typical week around here. Rod built trees and rawhided trees. I did up wood and varnished trees. Pretty normal…

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

Something we read about quite often when looking at information on saddle fit is that the tree should “flare” out at the shoulders so there is room for the shoulder blade to rotate back as the horse moves. The idea is that the tree is not contacting the horse at all for a distance behind the front bar tip. Depending on the person teaching, that distance can be an inch or two all the way up to five or six inches. While this idea may sound good, practically it has major problems. Allow me to demonstrate with a tree we have here that we duplicated.

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 got another tree in to duplicate lately. I feel for the owner on this one. The story is that less than two years ago, he paid $4300.00 for a plain roughout with a padded seat from a shop with a good reputation that, from our understanding, contracts out building saddles to individual saddle makers. This past autumn, a horse rolled on it. No flipping over backwards or major fall on hard ground. Something the saddle maker said shouldn’t break a tree. When the customer went back to the store for warranty work, they told him because he was a rancher and worked cattle on pasture, it wasn’t covered...

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

Here is a picture of the tree we mentioned in a blog post a while ago - in all its glory...

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 while back we were asked to make a reproduction of a Pony Express saddle tree to be used in re-enactments. They wanted it as close to authentic as possible, but to fit today’s horses. The problem is, there are no original Pony Express saddles left anywhere, so nobody knows for sure exactly how they were made…