Another Move on the Horizon!

Some of you may already know this but I can now make it more public knowledge. For the last 10 months my other half has been working in Australia on a rather gruelling schedule. I think since Christmas he's only spent 10 weeks at home and for half of that time I've been working, so we haven't seen much of each other. So, a few months ago we talked about moving to Australia again, so we could both have 'normal' jobs again and both be at home every evening and weekend.

And so it's happening. We have both secured jobs and will be moving at the beginning of October, all being well. We'll be living in Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, where we have lived previously for 18 months so we know it well and have a fair few friends there. Our house here will be rented out, although we still have to do some re-decorating and repairs. I will also have to do a big sort out of my model collection, many of which have already been with me once around the world so I will be selling off quite a large number. I have far too many now anyway.

So this also means that I will be unable to make any tack for a few months until my stuff arrives in Australia. I will be finishing off a couple of orders over the next few weeks and have contacted other people whose orders will be post-poned. Meanwhile I won't be taking on any new orders. I have to figure out how busy I will be with my new job, and I'd also like to be selfish and get a real horse of my own! I think I will finally have the means and time to be able to get my first horse, and hopefully do a bit of competing in eventing which is popular in the area.

So this blog, at this time next year, may well feature more about real horses than the model variety, but I'll still be making tack, just not very much and probably for myself or for the odd sale.

NAN Results

I'm not 100% on how many top-tens my tack helped their owners to, but here's one I know of for sure. Stacy Quick commissioned this pony jumping set earlier this year for her Newsworthy model. I featured the set on the blog. Stacy was very kind in letting me know that the tack helped her gain NAN qualification. Her entry ended up getting third, which is a great result. I love the co-ordination between the blues in the set and the gorgeous jump.

Thanks Stacy and Congratulations!

Long time no post!

Sorry its been so long since I've written. Not a huge amount has gone on with tack making for the last month or so. I've been making more Equorum tack and I've had some great feedback about this tack from buyers, which is lovely to hear. I also had a trip to Kazakhstan with work which I may do a post on!

Back in May I held my annual show, the Dartmoor Live. We had 16 entrants this year, 6 up from last year! Personally I think the show went pretty well, over-ran a little bit time-wise, but no-one seemed to mind too much. Lunch time was longer than anticipated due to the excitement of the raffle and my new 'favourite model' awards. I gave everyone at the show a special ribbon prize to award to their favourite model at the show. Everyone seemed to enjoy this a lot but choosing just one was very difficult!

Performance Champion was Heather Irvine's gorgeous Justin Tyme resin with a cross country set up.

And overall Breed champion was Ann Sheppard's cold painted china Valentin, a superb model and my personal favourite of the whole show. Reserve was the little palomino Dauntless clinky and reserve to reserve went to the Indy.

I was very pleased when my HA shetland pony Rhubarb won the UK workmanship championship. He was painted by Amanda Greaves a couple of years ago and finally has his recognition! He won a brand new medallion kindly donated by Kelly Savage, which I have instructed Kelly to send straight to Amanda as a thanks for her painting skills!

It was a tiring day but well worth it in the end!

Hopefully I'll be back on track with the tack soon, I have a lot to do in the next few weeks so I hope I can remember to take some pics to share...

Great New Tool!!

Stitch-marking is something that hobbyists have started to expect to see on top LSQ tack. There was a phase when stitch-marks were put around just about every single piece on an english saddle, but thankfully most tack-makers have 'grown-out' of that tendency. In real life, you usually only see stitch marks around the edges of knee rolls and also perhaps along the upper edge of jockey near the seat welt. Most saddles do not have them all the way round the flaps and jockeys. That's the case for the European market anyway, you do see them more often on American hunt-seat saddles. In the past I have made stitch-marks by hand, which is painful, time-consuming and never looks that great due to natural inconsistencies. So when I discovered pouncing wheels, I was most pleased that I could save so much time using them.

But, for some time I have been dissatisfied with my normal pouncing wheels. Pouncing wheels are made for transferring designs through paper, usually nice long sweeping lines. The point spacing isn't too critical as they're used as a guide for paintwork and similar applications. The spacing on my pounce wheels is fairly wide, and not in scale even for traditional scale tack items.

So, I've always been on the hunt for something better, been it's always been tricky knowing what terms to use in search engines or ebay for example. Until that is, I cam upon a thread on a modelling forum, focussing on model aeroplanes. They mentioned a tool called a 'riveter', in particular one made by a company called Trumpeter. I did a search and immediately came up with a very reasonably priced product, at £4.95. That's a pretty good price considering my pounce wheels were over £12, so I bought one and it arrived today. Admittedly, the tool is plastic and possibly a little delicate, so we'll see how it holds up over time.

But I was immediately impressed with the wheels it came with and their point spacing. Here's a picture of the three metal pouncing wheels next to the new tool with it's 4 blades (one is in the tool). The left two pouncing wheels have a point-per-inch count of 14-15. The other wheel has a count of 23 (I use this one most on my tack projects). You may not be able to see the points on the blades very well, but they have counts of 23, 27, 33 and 44!

44 dots per inch is hard to count!

After my show at the weekend I will be trying them out on leather, and I have high hopes! I'd love to find something similar in a wooden or metal handle, but beggars can't be choosers. Maybe I can persuade Andy to make a nice handle for me.....

I don't paint much....

But I felt inspired today and painted my little Pepys resin whilst watching the Badminton Horse Trials. I haven't painted anything for about 6 or 7 years, and even then only have about 5 models to my name. I think I was attracted to this resin because he is small and textured, which i think makes it easier to paint! I even attempted some patches of roaning and a blue eye. His feathers are also a bit grubby from playing around with his pals all day.

I think I'll try showing him as a Gypsy Cob foal, any ideas for a name?

Another March Bridle

Seems that March was a bit of a bridle month! I made a simple snaffle bridle for a friend Caroline Jones in exchange for some of her old tack making supplies. This one features raised nose and brow bands but no stud-hooks. Once in a while when I make a bridle without the hooks I realise just how quickly I can make them!

The bridle is modelled by new fairly new unpainted Jasmine resin who has recently had some 'surgery' to correct her wonky legs. Luckily the surgery was non-invasive and just involved a long hot bath!

Out of interest Caroline writes her own blog about pedigree assignment called Pedigree Chum! It's something I would love to do but seems an daunting task given the size of my collection and my ever decreasing spare time.

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'.