4/25/2021 0 Comments Visalia Stock Saddle Company
Ill recover both trees with rawhide (or maybe have it done for me) and build new saddles on them, based on some photos I have found of saddles that appear to have similar trees, such as the one attached.It was just an old saddle and was missing all the leather except the pommel cover.
It had obviously had several repairs to the rigging and tree before they finally gave up on the saddle. The rawhide had been cut away in several places to effect the tree repairs. It was obviously beyond help as a reasonable restoration candidate, so I used it as a learning project. I was surprised, as I removed the rawhide, to find a paper label on the cantle that says, Visalia. The pommel cover has the remnants of nice basket-weave stamping and the horn has the remnants of a braided rawhide horn cover. It was interesting to me how much leather was used in fairing the pommel to the bars and in the ground seat. And are you going to rebuild what you stripped off or leave it at that. Since hes only about 13.5 hands, I decided to just see whether it would fit him, since saddles with regular QH bars are a bit wide on him. It seems to fit, or can be adjusted easily to fit, so I decided to rebuild the tree and build an old-style saddle for that particular horse. The tree currently has bars that have about a 88-89 degree angle, but the pommel was build with a joint in the middle, which is loose. ![]() I think Ill reconstruct the tree and strengthen it with a layer or two of bi-directional f-glass cloth, then reapply a rawhide cover. Not sure yet whether Ill try the rawhide myself or have it done. The Nikkels have a pretty nice article on their website about it, so I may try it myself as a learning project. It takes forever to upload the pics and I cant resize them, so the forum limits the number I can upload. I guess the album must first be approved, so it should show up later. I thought it best to put the photos in a gallery rather than to take up a lot of space on the forum. The album is entitiled Teardown of a Visalia saddle, Tony Henrie (or something like that). I will add photos to the album as I progress through the rebuild. I have recut the angles on the swells and cantle to reset the bar angle to fit a modern horse. I temporarily assembled the tree and tried it on my QH mare, but it was still a little narrow in the gullet and there was not quite enough twist, or wash-out, in the tails of the bars. ![]() I have decided to duplicate all the parts and reset the angles and reshape the bars a little to fit my mare.
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