The Bridle

There is an impending storm for tomorrow. Harriburg is supposed to be dumped with over a foot of snow. So hopefully I wake up to white fluffy goodness tomorrow.
The western set is coming along well.
The stirrups were finished.

 The bridle is almost done. I tooled the pieces and cut them out of my remant remains of leather. (I haven’t cut into the large slab yet!).

I’m thinking about entering the Berks County Model Horse show, and that is on March 1st. My goal is to have this done. I know I won’t have any customs finished, so one of my Roxys will be wearing the set.

It's More Fun…..

…..when you know what you are semi-doing.
The saddle , when I began on it after school, was in pieces. I covered the tree, so it was a bunch of tooled leather.

Using thumb tacks I made a hole for the fenders and added conchos.  I didn’t use the hole punch pencil because I was going through layers of leather.

The underside of the saddle looked like a wire weapon. :)

Parts were added and underside was covered with chamois. The stirrups are adjustable! This is the most realistic western saddle that I have ever made. It just needs stirrups added. And a girth. And a bridle. But I’ll figure out the bridle once I know who will be wearing the saddle.

Finished for the night.

Hole Punching

The longer that I am a part of the hobby, the more I keep learning that if you want to produce nice things, you must have the right equipment to do so.
Up until today, whenever I would make holes for a piece of tack, I would use a push pin.

Source

The pros of using them was that I could find them virtually anywhere in my house. The con was that I wasn’t punching a hole. Instead I was just tearing a hole into the leather so the hole never stayed in place. Once I moved the leather *bam* it was like the hole was never there.
After school today I went to Office Max and bought a pair of technical/drafting pencils. Jennifer Buxton of Braymere Custom Saddlery had an awesome tutorial of how she made holes.

Following it, I took apart the pencils and am now ready to punch holes! I can’t wait to make something. Mostly so that I can use a hammer. :)