Peekture day!

I'm very fortunate to have a wonderful lady, at the barn where I ride, who is quite talented with her camera.  She recently got a new lense for it and asked for a volunteer to try it out on.  Well, I love pictures of my pony so I asked if we could be her guinea pigs.  I'm so glad I did!  I spent about an hour trying to get Norton to look less like a wild pony and more like a horse who's seen the show ring on occasion (cause really he has...) and out we went! 

Big thanks again to Sabine McDonald! 

Anatomy/History Class!

I love sidesaddle riding.  I love just about all things sidesaddle related.  I love it so much I think everyone should try it once, especially if they have a horse (men included!)  I kept an eye out on e-bay to see if I could pick one up for a deal, so I could have it for that exact purpose. 
Eventually one came along.  Meet Mergatroid. 

This picture is after a good soaking of leather conditioner and the pommels I covered in vet wrap as they were very worn and not in very good repair.  Mergatroid is an old Catelogue sidesaddle, one you would've ordered from Sears and Roebuck a million years ago and would've cost about $7.25.  The tree (this is the important part) is called a RUWART tree. 

After being ridden by a number of different friends, it became evident that poor old Mergatroid could use a facelift.  So, why just stop at that?  Why not go for broke?  I'm al all or nothing kind of girl afterall! 

So, I spent an entire day stripping the poor saddle.  I removed all the leather, cotton batting (not original), horse hair (original), and applicable hardware (approximately 200 apolstery and finishing nails, 2 drywall screws and 1 deck screw).  I found that there were only 4 original pieces of leather on the saddle: the near-side flap/safe (which had beautiful floral tooling in it), the little flap that covered the stirrup hanger on the near side and the pannels on the bottom of the saddle.  This is what I had after the dissection:

From here, some very kind ladies had begun giving me advice on what to do in order to get this tree back into workable condition.  Before sanding and fiberglassing, I needed to wash, yes WASH all the red IRON paint off it!  Covering the entire tree (minus the metal strapping) was a bunch of netting under the paint.  It was like a very early and primitive form of fiberglass covering the tree.Ooooh you have no idea the mess that landed in my kitchen, but I did as I was told.  About 8 buckets of nice, warm, sudsy water and I was full of paint, the floor and table in my kitchen were full of paint, my little helper (isn't she cute?) was full of paint, even my CATS were full of paint, but the tree is quite clean.   Thankfully, the paint is water soluable, so it was easy enough to clean up.

It is really interesting to see the pieced of metal and how many pieces of wood have gone into building this old girl.  One person's vision is truly a work of art!  So, now she gets a few days to dry out really well and I'm going to attack her with a putty knife to get all the old glue off before sanding.  You see, there was a "saddler" who had gotten his mitts on this old girl before I bought her and did some "repairs" (see drywall and deck screws) which included GLUING new leather to parts of the tree.  Gak! 

To be continued...