Saddle Trees Part 2

I took this picture at the weekend at a spot called Basset's Cove on the North Coast, about 4 miles from my house. You might notice the rock in the foreground has a grimacing face on it! It's so nice to be able to visit these places as and when I feel like it, and to have such stunning scenery on my doorstep. It's always very inspiring!

Back to the saddle trees. In my previous post I said I would be working on a new saddleseat tree design. The picture below shows the basic shape cut from sheet brass. The cut-back head is equivalent to a 4 inch cut-back in real life, it looks pretty long in model form so I hope it doesn't look too weird on the finished saddle. I chose a squarer cantle for this tree as I think it makes these type of saddles look really elegant. As you might be able to tell, cutting out the inside hole was quite hard work, but as this doesn't show on the finished saddle it doesn't matter if it's a little bit rough!

Once the tree has been shaped and the stirrup bars have been added (see previous post for how I did this), I began the process of 'webbing up' the tree. The webs are strained to give a comfortable seat with a bit of give, and also provide anchor points for the girth billets. On a real saddle rivets are used to fix the webbing, but I used a glue gun instead! In the photo you can see the two central trees are saddleseat trees, and the trees at each end are dressage/VSD type trees.

After the webbing is all secure, I cut a seat out of craft foam and glued in place. I then rasped down the edges to create a smooth appearance. The photo shows the seats part way through this process, I have done a little bit of rasping and finished them off using a knife.

I am really happy with how these new trees are coming along. I think by sticking as closely as possible to the real process will really improve my saddles. But I think I would have struggled in the past to make these as well as I have now, partly because my skills have always been developing and evolving, and partly because I probably had to try lots of different methods before truly understanding why this one works.

Next I'll be skipping a few steps and showing you the finished saddleseat saddles. I know many people would like to see the steps in between but I can't give away all my secrets!