The Repair Shop

Guide to Buying Used Saddles

Posted January 23, 2016 by Don Gonzales

Whether you are looking to buy a used saddle from an individual or from a retail store that sells used saddles, it’s a good idea to do some research in some key areas of the used saddle market. This guide to buying used saddles will get you started on the road to buying a quality used saddle. The first thing to understand is what makes a “good used saddle.” For me the definition of a good used saddle has three key qualities that I’m looking for when purchasing:

Making sure the saddle tree is not broken
Knowing what brand the saddle is and whether it is worth repairing
The price of the saddle compared to the market value

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Slicking Leather Edges

Posted October 6, 2015 by Don Gonzales

Everyone has a different process when it comes to slicking leather edges on their leather projects. There are always more than a few ways to skin a cat, but this is the process that I use and it works well for me. Continue reading →

Real Sheepskin or Synthetic?

Posted September 17, 2015 by Don Gonzales

One of the most expensive jobs in the repair shop is replacing your saddles sheepskin lining underneath the skirts. This is labor intensive because we have to completely disassemble the saddle and remove the skirts from the tree. This job can easily run upwards of $400 depending on whether you go with the synthetic wool or the genuine sheepskin. Continue reading →

Spring is Almost Here!!!!

Posted March 8, 2015 by Don Gonzales

It’s March and we are still dealing with cold weather and many of us across the country are experiencing a fair amount of “winter mix” weather, but the fact is that winter is almost over and sunny days are soon to come. With that, now is a great time to take a sunday afternoon and go through your tack room. The majority of folks are fair weather horsemen and haven’t paid much attention to your saddle since before the holidays.

This is the time of year that our repair shop gets pretty busy and, depending on the repair, your normal wait on getting something fixed could be a couple weeks or better. Now is a great time to go through your saddles and check key areas that may need attention before your right in the middle of the season and your saddle is in the shop. Continue reading →

Killing mold on leather!

Posted August 17, 2014 by Don Gonzales

If you live in the south where humidity is high, you will run across mold on leather or some of your gear from time to time. This usually happens when you take a break from the horse world for a bit and keep your gear stored in a dark saddle house or in the tack compartment of your trailer when temperature and humidity are at their worst.

In my opinion, mold on leather is a good sign that your leather goods are healthy enough to support the life that is mold. By this I mean that you have done a great job of keeping your tack and saddles oiled up. Mold will not grow on saddles or leather that is dry rot and dead… nothing available for the mold spores to live on. Continue reading →

Hard to reach spots?

Posted September 12, 2013 by Don Gonzales

Having trouble getting to the tight areas when oiling that saddle in your tack room? Here’s a trick I have learned!
Pam makes a spray olive oil that, although maybe a little pricey, works great for those spots a big fat hand won’t fit! Since we oil all our leather products with good clean olive oil, this oil in a spray can is a great complement in our shop and takes a lot of pressure and worry from the hard to reach!
Try this out and let us know what you think!

What kind of oil should I use?

Posted February 28, 2012 by Don Gonzales

I get this question a lot both at the shop and when we are out at events and trade shows. The most common time this question is asked is when a customer brings in a saddle for repair and the repair needed is so extensive due to the amount of dry rot. Here the customer will usually say, “I would of oiled it but I didn’t know what kind of oil to use.” To this I always answer, “Even the wrong oil would have helped more than what you did… which was nothing.”

I know, oiling your saddle and gear is not the most exciting thing to do on your weekends off, but neither is writing large checks for saddle repairs or worse yet visiting the ground suddenly when something finally breaks.

There are hundreds of saddle conditioners, cleaners, lubricators, creams, savs, liquids, and the like that make choosing the best product for your gear a tuff choice. Again, ALL of these will, in some way, help your leather retain its life better than nothing at all. And if you still don’t feel comfortable making a decision then there is always a shop like ours that would be happy to handle this for you.

For oil, we use Olive Oil. We buy it from a local grocery supply company by the case and use it on both new and used leather items. I have heard of many people using canola, peanut, vegetable, and other food oils and they seem to work fine. My only issue with the other oils is that it seems to me that they would attract rats worse than the olive oil. Neatsfoot oil is the old standby and is still widely used. There is nothing wrong with this but it seems to me that olive oil seems to oil more evenly than neatsfoot and the main reason that we use it in the shop.

When it comes to conditioners, I recommend Skidmore’s Leather Cream above all else. This cream is great for lubricating the fibers in the leather and restoring life to dry stiff leather. This product is made of all natural ingredients including vegetable oils and beeswax and will also water proof the leather. A little bit of this cream goes a long way so don’t over do it, multiple light coats is always better than one heavy coat. This product is also amazing on boots and hunting gear.

The one thing to remember with conditioning your saddles and tack is that putting oil and conditioners on top of dirty leather can damage the leather. In doing this over time, you create multiple layers of dirt and oil which becomes a thick film that is almost impossible to remove. I always recomend washing leather with a mild dish soap like Dawn, Ivory, or even Murphy’s Oil Soap and rinsing thoroughly. Scrub the saddle with a medium bristle brush to lift the dirt and grime out of the leather. I don’t recommend saddle soap because it is suppose to be left on the saddle to dry and then the dirt stays on the leather. If you want to lather the saddle up with saddle soap after its cleaned, then that’s okay.

Always let your saddle dry completely (could take a day or two) before oiling and conditioning. If you oil too soon, you could get a real bad case of mold. I will talk more about mold and controlling it in a later post.

I know its hard to remember to oil your saddle and tack, but here is my suggestion on a system that may not make it such a big deal. Every time you worm your horses give all your tack and saddles a good look over and wipe them down with a light coat of oil. And when it comes to doing a complete washing and oiling, I recommend this once a year. This could be every time your coggins is due or at the end of your show season. And if you don’t want to go through the trouble of doing it yourself you can always drop it off at the saddle shop and we will do it for you.

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Beware of Import Saddles

Posted February 18, 2012 by Don Gonzales

These days many items are made overseas, bringing with that lower cost and bigger selections for American consumers. No matter your opinion of this issue, continued import of overseas manufactured items is here to stay and for the most part accepted by consumers. Even the saddle industry is experiencing this and when it comes to some items the quality is reasonable for the cost. When it comes to saddles, consumers should really be cautious.
For years Americans have purchased saddles that have been imported from Mexico for an inexpensive alternative to the American made counterparts. With a few exceptions, these saddles have been marked with the stigma of low quality and at times structurally unsafe. No matter the stigma, many people trying to save a buck purchase these saddles anyway and deal with frequent repairs and saddle fitting issues. With any luck they aren’t injured due to the saddles less than adequate structural integrity.
The newest addition to this “value based” saddle market is saddles imported from countries like India. In the saddle shop we have run across these on a semi frequent basis and the quality is worse than usual. Many folks are buying these saddles on the internet and eBay and although they may look decent in the photos, when they arrive it is immediately seen that they are less than functional. I have seen these saddles with no rigging dees at all, making them impossible to actually use on a horse. We have seen them with synthetic leather and trees, plastic rigging dees and a number of other issues that make these saddles dangerous to use.
The most recent experience that we have had the pleasure to work on in the repair shop was a true gem of the import saddle industry. The saddle came in for an offside front rigging dee replacement. This is a job that is very common and not very expensive to fix. When the saddle was broken down in the repair room, the repair man confronted me with an issue. He told me that the rigging couldn’t be fixed and that I should look at the tree with him. Looking at the tree bar at first I didn’t understand what the problem was. It was a fiberglass tree bar with holes in it where the original rigging screws use to be, this was nothing out of the ordinary. The saddle really didn’t appear to be a bad built saddle. It was a training saddle with rawhide mounted dees on the corners of the skirts for driving lines, rawhide trimmed horn, padded seat and good color. I asked my repair man what the issue was and he proceeded to show me the problem.
He took a screw and stuck it in one of the existing screw holes and then moved it at different angles from side to side. Yes, that’s right! The entire tree bar was a hollow fiberglass shell. It looked like a wooden bar covered with fiberglass, but in reality it was an empty fiberglass bar… no wood at all. Think of it as an empty egg! The entire saddle was like this, both bars and swells even the cantle. This was unbelievable! I have never seen anything like this before and couldn’t believe that someone had been riding this saddle and they weren’t hurt.
With further inspection we also discovered that all the rawhide holding the accessory dees on and the binding around the horn wasn’t rawhide at all. The dees were mounted with nylon webbing and masking tape was stuck over the top. The horn binding was just masking tape. Unbelievable!
At that point we called the customer and told them that we would not fix the saddle and warned them of the danger involved in using the saddle. All I can say is that I hope everyone keeps their eyes open for these types of saddles. It’s one thing to by a cheap pair of “Oakeys” or “Raye Bans”, but putting your life on the line with this inferior garbage being imported into the states from countries that have no knowledge of what these saddles go through in our country is extremely dangerous. Remember that a custom saddle has at least $1000.00 in material in it, so when you’re looking online and you find a new saddle on eBay for $300, beware.

Third post on the retree of a saddle

Posted August 31, 2011 by Don Gonzales

The retree is almost over, at least for the hard part. Once the swell cover and cantle back are put back on the seat is installed.

This is where we see how well we did so far. If all is well, then the seat should fall right in and even match up with the old wear marks around the swell cover. The seat is pinned in place around the front so we are sure it is where it should be while we glue it in.

We glue the rear of the seat first with two coats of glue. If we are right the seat should line up with the cantle plugs at the back of the Cheyenne roll and be even. If you have a little difference here you can sand off to even it up.

Once the back of the seat is glued down then we move onto the binder. Most of the time the binder is destroyed during it’s removal, here we got lucky and were able to use the old one. I prefer this because it makes the saddle look more original when completed. The less new leather you have to use the better the job finishes out. My motto with repair is do your best to cover your tracts so that it looks like you were never there.

On this particular project we had to make some compromises in sewing the binder. I usually like to always stitch back in the old holes, but with the age on this saddle we couldn’t do that for the new stitches tearing through. My fix for this issue was to stitch through every other hole, with as close as the holes were to start it worked out well and looked fine.

Last to do here is glue down the front of the seat (with two coats). The hardest part of this job is completed now and all the parts are ready to be washed and oiled. This is done no different than a normal clean, oil, and polish. I do this to all the retrees that I do to insure that it gets a good oiling and looks great for the customer.

Here you can see that the saddle is complete and ready to be put back to work. Aside from the new horn the saddle looks no different than when it first came to us, except being cleaner… And now the tree isn’t broke.

Let us know what your thoughts are on putting a tree in a saddle. I do probably two a year, and I credit that to me trying to talk folks out of them. But for some situations it is worth the money, and for this customer it was well worth it! He was glad to have his rig back to work out of.