Sex, Lies, SaddleFitting as touted by the self proclaimed

The CorrecTOR by Len Brown, SADDLE FIT, by the man that started it all!

Sex, Lies, & SaddleFitting as touted by "master saddlers" & clinicians / therapist of all sorts!

First let;s talk a little about English saddles, how they can sore the horse at a sitting trot or walk, even with the best of "fit". How this particular problem could have been prevented with only another 1/2 hour at the bench.

    Just look at where the rear of the sweat flap and outer flap attach to the underside of the tree bar. It's a tab of leather above the stuffed panels to keep it well hidden from you.

     NO. 1.... the English tree was never made to fit a horse but shaped to the riders seat. The angles of the bars are sharp right up to where they flow into the cantle. (back of the seat)

     These 2 leather tabs are about 2.5" wide and 1/4" thick apiece and are the extended tab that attaches the sweat and outer flaps of your saddle at the rear. They are nailed to the underside of the bars on each side.

     Where they curl over that angled thin edge of bar above the stuffed panels, they create a set of Knuckles. Kind of like brass KNUCKS, above your stuffed panels.

    The top German saddlers are proud to call it necessary for "clear seat aids". While doing clinics in Europe I would palpate a horse at his forward point of the Gluteals & down, at about that suspected spot. Sure enough.... they would dip a foot. (Yes it can be worse on one side than the other.) (READ PG. 6 ) Older horses would be sway backed from this only because of the saddle's "severe seat aids". Croups flatten, backs dorsiflex, heads pop up, all because of this cheap method of saddle production. (Not that this is the only factor, there's still the points of the bars & soring at the withers.)

     Why are they there, don't these saddlers know what they are doing? ?

     Yes they know, but this is production saddlery!!! To remedy this problem in a saddle, you take each of the two layers of the flap's leather tab ( about 3/8" thick total) and cut them into fingers like the top of a castle. Then these two layers must be offset so the fingers make only one layer of leather thickness. This is called "CASTLE CUTTING THE FLAPS.

     You then skive thin this one layer thickness so as to create a thin layer of top grain leather which attaches the 2 flaps at the rear on each side of the saddle, without the "knuckle" at that curved thin edge of tree bar.

       How severe are these knuckles above the stuffed panels? When putting the OrthoFlex panels under a UK made saddle without the stuffed panels, these Knuckles would sore the horse right thru the delrin.

    So what can restuffing do with a saddle made like this? Nothing, but rebalance the rider as that's all it was ever meant to do! To actually fit a horse by re-flocking requires new leather patterns for the stuffed panels. New Panel patterns can then be flocked very firmly to match that horse's back while standing? All of this cost more than buying a new saddle.It still hasn't addressed the problem of the "seat aids" designed to overcome saddle discomfort with MORE PAIN FOR CLEAR SEAT AIDS!! That's the their excuse folks.

      So what is a Master saddler? Simply a good leather craftsman, these people don't ride. Don't know when a rider is balanced in a saddle if they were there to watch them ride. Know nothing of anatomy and the physics of movement of the quadruped. I know many of the award winning saddlers in the UK. I've been to their little shops. I've explained as much about saddlery and the horse to them as I could because they couldn't understand why I had to have things done so differently than they were shown.

    I worked with the treemaker of the UK as well. He's a recluse who seldom goes out in public because of his phobia. Very quiet and won't even go out to eat. Inherited the business you know! If he doesn't make the tree, he sells the Steel arch stampings to a saddler that laminates the layers of beech veneer himself in a simple mold & rivets it to the arched head stampings. That's English saddlery and glimpse of saddlemaking in the UK. Len > 816 625 0333

Want a little inside scoop as to how the saddle industry works? Hang on & you'll find out how haphazard the introduction of "new developements" in this backstabbing little industry are. Then you can see how you've been taken advantage of & how your horse suffers as anything goes for a buck to keep sales up. I've spent over 6 months in England working with tree makers and members of "The Worshipful Company of Mastersaddlers". Then I've spent years in the Saddletree business, England & the US>. I hope you enjoy the following, it's a window into the saddleworld for your private viewing only. Enjoy, Len

Find out how a young lady who's Father was an Oil baron from TEXAS with a huge ranch met and had a whirlwind romance with a young saddler from England who lived in a Mansion left to him by his in family of Nobility. Find what happened after this sudden marriage of these 2> ( now prominent) people in the English saddle world. "Only in the Horseworld" could a story like this happen without a novel or hollywood movie to dream it up.

The huge Texas ranch turned out to be a little dirt farm, no oil money! But this was found out only after the new bride visited the Mansion in England, (a little cottage hardly big enough for 1). The pair made it together for a few years after visting reality both in TX & the UK. Then one said "I'll be on", the plane, you can have your mansion. They divorced, but still remained business partners in Saddlery.

"I'll add a little every now and then to this bit of history without mentioning names or companies or exact locations. Just look for the little clues that tells the knowledgeable observer exactly what they want to know." Len

Now let's talk about a banker that met the daughter of an old boy that started a saddle company with a few other guys in Texas. The Banker was a big guy & paid me a grand once to put the ortho system in his saddle. He complained about paying a royalty to a patent owner of a half-tree saddle he built and sold. He later came up with the first flextree saddle. Just 2 thick plastic bars bandsawed out & stapled to a fork & cantle. NO rawhide covering necessary, just a little neoprene foam glued to the bottom of those bars & a slotted fiberglass ground seat to let it bend in one place. The foam wears out, the plastic edges are severe, the bend is in one place, right in front of the cantle. Let this baby hit your horse's back in a barrel run! Yep, just add the name flex & double the price with a top competitors name on it. It's almost as severe as the halftree, not quite, and he didn't have to pay anymore royalties.

He saw the hand writing on the wall, sold the whole shebang to an Investment banker from back east that was rolling up a lot of companies (english & western). The venture capitalist went broke buying these companies with these "hot products". He only lasted a few years. Everything was sold again at a big loss to another saddlemaker who had done well with one type of saddle in the trailriding field. The only one who made out here was the banker!

Now lets talk about saddletrees & treemakers. Some of these have been in business for many years. The oldest of the family and most knowledgeable is now gone. The son & grandkids are still at it though. It's a real find to get a saddlemaker who can ride, shape, and pattern his own trees. Once they find one of those he's treated very special. But as that saddle/pattern maker gets sucessful the price of trees gets higher. Credit is extended & the patterns are kept in a fireproof vault so the saddlemaker can view them with reassurance that they'll be there for him if he ever needs them. Yep, son #2 likes to build saddles on trees that match the ones that were "to be exclusive" to the patternmaker / saddler, (as he was assured by gramps before he passed on).

#1 son & #2 sister run the tree operation & dad is out building saddles full time, copying trees & leather patterns of this good old boy saddlemaker. After the saddlemaker sells a million dollars worth in one month by mailing a new catalog , the tree company burns to the ground!

Innocent son #1 claims dad emptied the vault & set the fire. Strange, but the trees the tree company offers today seem to have bars with all the flare & great seat shape designed into them by said saddlemaker. They're everywhere as "gaited horse saddles" & others. Only problem is: the trees were shaped for a panel system to flatten out the weight bearing surface, not ever shaped to be used on a horse's back direct.

If this son #1 ever rode a horse thousands of miles he'd know just like grandpaw; you don't ever make tree bars with so much flare on the ends and curve in the middle. It's a rocking chair on the horse's back until he can't take the pain in the middle anymore. (3 to 4 weeks of every-other-day riding)
Everybody's using them in all kinds of saddles with that special tree that's made to "fit" all those horses standing out there with there backs & bellies dropped. That equi's back comes up 2" at a walk or trot and the tree's the rocking chair. You and some respected saddlerys are buying this "fit-stuff" for "great shoulder blade movement" Guess who the good ole boy saddle/patternmaker was?

Later, Len Brown

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