Dressage Bridle

I made this for a great customer Marty in the UK, who wanted an upper level dressage bridle to fit his Peter Stone Warmblood. I don't actually have one of these models so I was happy to find out that Salinero's head is pretty similar. This bridle had my usual top end features, including a crank style noseband, stud-hook fastenings onto the bit and leather laced reins. It seems that not many tack-makers use leather to lace reins and I often wonder why. I tried using thread once upon a time and got really frustrated with it. Now I cut some very fine strands (about 0.5mm) of very thin lace, at the same time as I cut the main pieces for the bridle. I save the super-thin areas of my hides for this purpose, so I don't have to do any additional skiving to get the leather thin enough. Then along the reins I cut a short (about 1mm) slot every 5mm. Next i use my fine needle-nosed tweezers to thread the lace through the slots, taking care not to twist the leather lacing. I usually use about 3 x 10cm strands to lace one rein, or thereabouts. Each end of the strand is tucked and glued onder the previous 'turn'.