|
The trees are made of yellow poplar for the bars and cantle; the fronts are laminated baltic birch for added strength. As you can see the bars are notched out for the fronts and cantle to fit into. They are glued and screwed together. Then we cover them with bull rawhide, which is denser and stronger than regular cow rawhide.
Most of our trees have been made by Lennis Arave. He makes one of the best saddle trees in the world. Lennis learned most of his tree making skills from Dale Harwood and made trees for him for several years while I was making saddles. Lennis in turn has taught me to make trees. Lennis is still making some trees for us. All the rest of our trees are made by me, Kent Frecker.
We are not selling our trees at this time. We just make them for our own saddles.
This is Kent cutting out the tree bars with his bandsaw and angle Jig.
He is carefully shaping and planeing the bars so that they are exactly the same and fit properly
He is very meticulus about the shape of the swells. Here he is shaping a wade front.
This shows a finished set of bars. In the background are the blocks of wood he starts out with.
This shows a finished front and the block of wood that is required for it.
This is a finished cantle. Behind it is the wood ready for another cantle.
This shows all the separate parts and also the tree put together with two coats of polyurithane to protect the wood from the wet rawhide that will go on next.
Trees ready for rawhide.
This is the first step to rawhiding a tree: draping it over and start trimming.
Tacks are put in place to hold the rawhide
The stitching starts first with the horn, then the cantle, and last the bars.
This shows how thick the bull hide is that we use.
As the rawhide dries on the wood, the stitches must be tapped on every day until it dries. This ensures a flat smooth seam.
This is the final step. We put on a coat of shellack over the rawhide. This protects the rawhide from moisture. We uses shellack verses polyurithane because shellack is a natural finish made from insects, and the glue will adhere to it. Polyurithane, on the other hand, is a petrolium base product, and the glue just goes gummy when the two contact.
Here is a row of finished trees ready to be made into saddles
|
