Wood Post Will James saddle tree
We are no longer building saddle trees. We have two saddle fit videos available on our westernsaddlefit.com website. Western Saddle Fit - The Basics, aimed at riders, is available either on DVD or streaming on Vimeo while the six hour series Well Beyond the Basics, aimed more for professionals but understandable by anyone, is available by streaming on Vimeo. (We left this website up because we have had many requests to keep the information available.)
Here are a few pictures of a wood post Will James tree Rod built this week. He will be rawhiding it Monday. This one is 13" wide with a 4 1/2" stock thickness. The horn on this tree is 3" high with a 3 1/2" cap at 24 degrees. The specs on the cantle are: 4 1/2" high, 12" wide at 37.5 degrees with a 1 1/4" dish but these, of course, are totally unrelated to the fork style.
I got curious so I crunched some numbers. Our stats may be a little skewed because at times we can get a maker that really likes a certain fork style so they will order quite a few of that style, but when I started to look at where the different trees went, it was pretty interesting. In every other wood post swell fork style, most went to Canada and a few to the US. The closest to even was the Modified Association with 11 out of 29 going to the US. But when it comes to a wood post Will James - 18 out of 23 went south of the border. This one is following suit, headed to Missouri.
The Will James is getting to be a more commonly requested fork style too, for us anyway. Fourteen out of the 23 were ordered in the last 5 years, out of the 16 years we have been building. And looking at horn type, almost half of the Will James we have built have been wood post (23) compared to metal horn (24).
We took a wood post Will James tree down to Wichita Falls in Texas for the Boot and Saddle Makers show in 2010. That was the first tree everyone put their hands on and looked at down there. In Sheridan, it is always the Wades that get picked up and checked out first. I find it pretty interesting seeing the regional differences in styles of trees. I expect we will be building more of these in the future. They make a real good looking tree.
