One of the most difficult steps in building custom saddles is fitting the saddle seat and cutting the ears. In this post I will show you my trick for insuring that every saddle ear you cut will be perfect. Whether you are a beginner or you are a seasoned veteran, this tip will take the fear out of tackling this step. There are many different ways to accomplish this, but here is my process.
Things to keep in mind during the video:
- Saddle seat leather is cased well and completely wet
- Cantle plugs are already in place and cut for clearance of the housings (I usually want a finger distance between bottom of plug and tree bar where cantle meets bar)
- Saddle seat leather has been cut to fit front and tacked in place around swell
- Seat is pulled in place with draw down strap
Video of Cutting Seat Ears on Custom Saddles
Remember to take your time and don’t cut anything till you’re sure the line you drew is where you want it. As you are cutting the line, push the seat back and look to make sure that you are going to have enough to fold over the cantle and that your ear won’t be too low or far away from your plug at the bottom.
If you do this properly, you should end up with plenty to fold over the cantle and have plenty of leather to create a beautiful seat ear for your seat concho.
After this is done and your seat is tacked in place I leave the draw down strap in the seat and put weighted leather bags in the seat for it to dry for a couple days. Once the drying stage is over then you can perform the final cut stage. I will work on a video of this step soon to show you how I go about this step.
Thank you so much and I hope you found this video helpful. Building custom saddles is fun but this step can cause some of us to pull our hair out so hopefully this will help you maintain your hairline. Be sure to email me if you have any questions and subscribe to our youtube channel as well as our monthly newsletter for the latest in content to help you succeed in your goals as a leatherhead!