Well, new to me, anyway- is DennisRanch.

Not in any way a polished professional blog, which is, frankly, refreshing. Some rudimentary E commerce- which is amusing as well. The saddle section doesn’t show what it needs to, I understand good leatherwork and his is obviously good, but the pictures don’t show it off to the best advantage.

When I was a lot younger i did some harness repair. It’s a tough thing to learn, at first- steel or wood mostly have repeatable properties but the properties of leather change from piece to piece, and sometimes even within the layers of a piece.

Somewhere, around here, I still have my skiving knife, along with a stitching clamp that attaches to a sawhorse. I made both pieces, the skiving knife out of a saw, the stitching clamp out of a pair of white oak planks I salvaged from boat ribs. I could fix pretty much any kind of trace or tug, used repair clips and splices or handsewed in repairs. Knowing what kind of taper to use on the skive, based on the material you had at hand, and knowing what side of the leather to use, and what kind of splice to put in (so it didn’t chafe against the horse), all part of the deal.

I was never a saddlemaker, and I salute and admire their art, and art it is. A man can ride a well made saddle on a healthy horse every day for years, and never know it. A badly made and proportioned saddle hurts the horse or rider or both. Hell, one in a hundred thousand people understand that you have to ride in Wrangler jeans, unless you want thick callouses on the inside of your thighs!

Anyway, Go read DennisRanch. Seems to be the honest thoughts of an honest man. So far, I like it just fine.

UPDATE: Man, I’m screwing the pooch on these links, lately. Fixed.