Hazleton PA
2013

The craft of saddle making uses an array of tools designed for intricacy and precision. Hammers are essential for securely placing tacks and creating even creases in the leather. Various tools cut, shape, and detail leather, allowing artisans to maintain traditional methods while adapting to modern designs and needs.

https://www.westernfolklife.org/the-creak-of-leather-how-to

Design Transfer
TAP-OFFS are leather templates (flowers, leaves, etc.) used to transfer patterns to a piece of damp leather prior to carving and stamping. Saddlers make their own tap-offs, and each is as unique as a fingerprint. The dried leather tap-off is placed on the moist leather, design down, and tapped lightly with a mallet. After transferring the flowers and leaves, the carver uses a swivel knife to cut around the patterns and outline vines and stems surrounding the flower. Some saddlers prefer to draw an entire design onto a piece of drafting mylar, then trace the design from this to the leather. This practice produces designs that can be repeated many times. Only when the design is big and bold does a leather carver work freehand, without the aid of transfers or tap-offs.

Making a PAPER RUBBING is a common method of transferring a stamp pattern from leather to paper. Rubbings are useful for archiving designs for future use, or "borrowing" someone else's patterns.

Stamping
The practice of leather stamping transfers artistic designs from the maker's imagination to a blank slate of leather.

Floral designs are the most common and popular style of stamping among saddlers. An infinite variety of floral patterns are possible, replete with vines, stems, leaves, acorns, and other fillers. Floral patterns are stamped with an assortment of tools, each providing a particular result that, when seen together, produce the complete image. (Read on for an in-depth look about Flower Stamping).

Set Stamps, such as those that produce block patterns, geometric designs, or a basket weave look, are made by repeating the same set impression, one after the other, and stacking them one atop the other. Set stamps allow a large area to be covered relatively quickly.

Figure Carving - such as images of people, animals, and scenery - is the least common style of stamping done by saddlers.

The stamping process is tedious and time-consuming work and the saddler has a whole set of tools for that specific purpose. Leather to be stamped must be damp, but not too wet; when just moist enough it is "in case." The stamper must work quickly and finish stamping while the leather is moist.



The leather tooling on a western saddle fender is called the back housing. The back housing is the leather finish on the back of the saddle that connects to the skirt. The skirt is the large, flat piece of leather that surrounds the tree of the saddle. The skirt can have decorative tooling and stitching.



Western saddles are used for western riding and are the saddles used on working horses on cattle ranches throughout the United States, particularly in the west. They are the "cowboy" saddles familiar to movie viewers, rodeo fans, and those who have gone on trail rides at guest ranches. This saddle was designed to provide security and comfort to the rider when spending long hours on a horse, traveling over rugged terrain.

The design of the Western saddle derives from the saddles of the Mexican vaqueros—the early horse trainers and cattle handlers of Mexico and the American Southwest. It was developed for the purpose of working cattle across vast areas, and came from a combination of the saddles used in the two main styles of horseback riding then practiced in Spain—la jineta, the Moorish style which allowed great freedom of movement to the horse; and la estradiota, later la brida, the jousting style, which provided great security to the rider and strong control of the horse. A very functional item was also added: the saddle "horn". This style of saddle allowed vaqueros to control cattle by use of a rope around the neck of the animal, tied or dallied (wrapped without a knot) around the horn.

Today, although many Western riders have never roped a cow, the western saddle still features this historical element. (Some variations on the Western saddle design, such as those used in bronc riding, endurance riding and those made for the European market, do not have horns.) Another predecessor which may have contributed to the design of the Western saddle was the Spanish tree saddle, which was also influential in the design of the McClellan saddle of the American military, being used by all branches of the U.S. Army, but being particularly associated with the cavalry.

The Western saddle is designed to be comfortable when ridden in for many hours. Its history and purpose is to be a working tool for a cowboy who spends all day, every day, on horseback. For a beginning rider, the western saddle may give the impression of providing a more secure seat. However, this may be misleading; the horn is not meant to be a handle for the rider to hang onto, and the high cantle and heavy stirrups are not for forcing the rider into a rigid position. The development of an independent seat and hands is as critical for western riders as for English riders.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_saddle

https://saddleschool.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/some-history-of-the-western-saddle/