When you get a new saddle one of the first things you have to deal with is setting your fender length. Whether you are riding English or Western, here are some guidelines to follow to get an approximate starting length. Getting Started On The Ground Before you even step into the saddle you can start on the ground. Put one …
Reconditioning An Old Saddle
Last week we had a saddle come into the shop that my dad built over 25 years ago. The billets needed to be replaced because they where dry and cracking, an obvious safety issue. Also, in the customer’s own words “please make it beautiful again!” After looking over the saddle I recommended that we recondition the saddle as well as …
Saddle Pads And Saddle Fit
We get asked all the time about using pads to help a saddle fit better. First we’ll cover a tree that is too wide for a horse and then about the tree that is too narrow for a horse. To be clear when we talk about how wide a tree is we’re only talking about the front of the bars …
Buying A Used Synergist
Over the years we have found riders who will buy a used Synergist saddle from a third party based only on their seat size and then be surprised that the saddle either caused their horse to get sore or themselves. Our saddles don’t magically fit every horse and rider combination. They were initially created to fit one horse and one …
Custom Saddle ~ Is It Really?
We have had quite a few of our customers come to us who are very skeptical because of a bad experience with a custom saddler in the past. Some didn’t like the way the saddle fit them. Some didn’t like the way the saddle fit their horse. And some didn’t like the way it fit them or their horse.The term …
The Problem with Saddle Fit
Dennis Miller, the comedian, used to have a segment on his TV show called ‘The Rant’. Every week he would start by saying “I don’t want to go on a rant here…” and then proceed to go on a rant about something that was bothering him. At the end of each rant he would finish by saying “Of course, that’s …
Saddles With Tree vs Treeless Saddles
Treeless saddles are all the buzz these days. You have your haters and you have your lovers. As you get older you realize that life is much more about the gray areas and very little falls into absolute black or white. For every rider-horse-saddle combination, there are going to be pros and cons.The problem with most of the information on …
Saddle Bridging
If you have been around horses for more than a year it’s a good bet you heard of the term ‘bridging’ when talking about saddle fit. A saddle that bridges is probably the most common saddle fit problem. A saddle that is bridging is making contact in the front and the back of the tree with little or no contact …