If You Blog It, It Will Come ...

Well, this will teach me to start blogging about the importance of safety and keeping your tack in good repair. Ma always used to say, "Don't call trouble - it will find you on its own."

This saddle landed on my bench today. It had come in to be sold on consignment, but Edie noticed some rather distinct wrinkles on the seat:


While wrinkles like this can be caused by a rider who uses a lot of seat, by the tree being strained a little too loosely, or just by a weak spot in the leather, they can also show up when the tree is compromised. When Edie flexed it, the wrinkles REALLY stood out:



This saddle is a Passier - and their wood ("Baum") trees are noted for being outstandingly durable. They use bamboo to reinforce the tree, which makes them nicely flexible and amazingly resilient - I've seen these trees survive some pretty serious trauma, including being landed and rolled on. But in addition to the wrinkles, the saddle made a rather ominous creak when it was flexed ... which led us to think the tree might be compromised.

In order to check the tree, you have to drop the panels and peel back the gullet cover. First step is to pop the stitching at the pommel:



Next, you take your backing awl and pull the stitching out (or you can cut the stitches if you're familiar with the stitch pattern):

(And I do use two hands to do all this work ... but I need one hand to take the photos!)

Here's the saddle with the pommel dropped:

Next, you cut the stitching on the cantle:

And again, use your backing awl to pull the stitches (same caveat applies here re: cutting the stitches):

With the cantle dropped:

This saddle has point billets that run through the thigh block, so you need to pull the tree points out of the pockets and slide the billets out of the blocks:

Now you have the gullet cover exposed:

And you can start pulling staples:

A note here to anyone who wants to learn saddlery work: ALWAYS ACCOUNT FOR YOUR SHARPS!! Losing a staple or a tack somewhere in the saddle is a big no-no, since it will invariably migrate to the horse's back at some point and cause a huge to-do ... not to mention the potential for a serious injury and a law suit.

Here's the rear of the cover opened. The cantle was fine, as were the rear of the spring bars. You can see the serial number, date of manufacture, and some other info (I don't speak German, but maybe it's the name of the person who made or inspected the saddle?). The Passier logo is also there, though hard to see in the photo.

The head plate is intact (not surprising - Herm Sprenger makes those head plates, and I've yet to see one break). You can also see what Passier calls the "stretch joint" (looks like stitches in leather, which is just exactly what it is), which allows the saddle to be widened or narrowed to a greater degree than most trees.

But when I checked under the girth webbing, I found the culprit:

The spring bar had cracked by the rivet hole. We're checking with the owner to see what she'd like to do. This sort of thing is pretty easily replaced by someone who's good at tree work, so the saddle (which is 13 years old according to the stamp) can be repaired and have a lot more years of use.