How We Make Your Saddle Better
As a saddler there are many alterations and modifications I can do to help make your existing saddle fit your horse better. Of course, sometimes the cost of doing this outweighs the cost of buying a new saddle. We will discuss any changes and costs before I make the changes.
I specialize in onsite alterations, which means I will be able to do most changes at your barn right in front of you. As this is not “common”, a lot of people are either intrigued or freaked out by watching me open up their saddle in front of them. The beauty of being able to do these changes onsite is that you are not without your saddle for any amount of time and we get to make sure all changes done do, in fact, make the saddle fit the horse better. Please trust me that everything I do to your saddle is considered normal practice. I will not do anything to affect the value of your saddle and it will be back to normal before I leave.
There are many materials used to flock saddles. I use a very high quality New Zealand white wool. The benefits of using this wool are that it is very soft, nearly impossible to make lumpy, fantastic on the horse's back, and it breaks in evenly. The downfall is that it can pack down fairly quickly so may need more regular maintenance. Some saddlers use a wool mix or a low grade wool product, however, problems with them can be that they pack down quite hard and lumpy, eventually leading to a full removal and re-flock of your panels over time. Some saddles are what we call “foam” packed. The panels of these saddles are literally pieces of foam, foam latex, or even high density felt cut into shape and formed into a panel. These are fine as long as they fit the horse perfectly because we cannot re-flock or alter the packing in these saddles. The benefit is that the panels barely change shape and, as long as nothing changes, the fit won't either. Air is another common panel fill these days. There are a couple different systems of air panels on the market. One system requires maintenance in the form of adding more air on a regular basis. The most common system is four (4) sealed air panels with foam in the middle. It is possible to add some flocking in behind these air panels, which may help these saddles fit better. You must also be aware that a sealed bag may potentially burst at some point, so if you suspect a flat air bag, have it checked out.
There are two most common ways to flock a saddle. The one you will see most often is incorrectly called “slash and poke”. This is done with your saddle in one piece, the flap lifted up and wool inserted through an incision that was made during manufacturing. Now every once in a while those incisions have been made too far under the stitching so we may have to add an incision into your panel. Please do not worry, this is completely fine for your saddle and normal. It will not effect your saddle's use or value. I try to make my incisions small and inconspicuous. Have a look under your saddle’s flap, tighten up on the panel by the seat and you will most likely see the incisions I am talking about, that you never noticed before. By using this method, I can really feel the wool being inserted into the panel and, therefore, prevent lumps or over flocking.
The other method is to “drop” the panels of your saddle. This means saddlers cut the stitching along the pommel and along the cantle and separate the seat/tree from the sweat flap/panels. This allows us to lay the panel on a flat surface and by going in through the incisions, we can flock tight into corners of the panels. It does require more work and skill, however, it is the only way to do a full re-flock and sometimes the only way to access the panels depending on the saddle’s brand. This too can be done onsite and your saddle will be sewn up 'good as new' when I am done.
Sometimes I have to “drop” your saddle’s panels to do other work. If I need to check your tree’s soundness or symmetry, to widen your saddle’s gullet, to move girth billets, to do some repairs, to remove flocking...... many reasons. Some jobs are just too time consuming or difficult to do onsite, in which case I will take your saddle home to work on my bench. The turn around time for this is 1-2 weeks.
I can also do stitching repairs, patches, panel replacements, channel widening, girth billet replacements, total re-flocking, and various other modifications and alterations.
