Nirvana's Tack

Western Pleasure classes drive me crazy.  Peanut-rolling horses, sparkly saddles, and trendy show outfits: they annoy me.  Maybe I never noticed this back when I was showing in 4-H, because I was just happy to be on a horse (ah, horseless horse 4-H...I once showed a pony that I had never seen before I was tacking it up for the show...did not go well), but we always showed in the same crappy saddles we trained in.  I did have a "show" shirt (it had horses and fringes on it!) and a rather pathetic hat that wouldn't hold its shape, but the closest I ever got to matching was that navy blue shirt and one pony's bright blue nylon bridle.  And I didn't care.  That fringed shirt that my mom made was COOL.  Just About Horses magazine had a picture of Marguerite Henry wearing a vest made out of the same material!

The model horse Nirvana actually got started because I wanted to make a miniature copy of the real horse's tack.  It's completely trashed, probably close to 20 years old, and it's the most comfortable saddle I've ever ridden in.  I do see the allure of making fantastic model saddles that you could never afford in real life, but for this one I wanted to do an homage to the crappy every day saddles that nobody ever copies in miniature.

Nirvana is a trail horse at a camp, so he always wears a halter.  The barn has tie stalls, and it's safer and faster to leave it on, since the horses may go out once an hour.  Plus, the lead and tail horses usually wear lead ropes on the trail, so that the wrangler doesn't have to carry so many in case of emergencies.

Edgar is modeling, as model Nirvana is still not f

inished.

Nirvana needs his forelock brushed.  Again.

His bridle is plain brown leather, with faded blue nylon reins.  The tack at camp is cobbled together from donations, and is based on whatever works for the horse.  A horse that was trained for English riding may end up with a snaffle bit and English reins on a Western bridle.  And of course, split reins are always tied together.  Like almost every Western bridle I've ever ridden in.  You know, the way you're not supposed to for showing.  :)  Amazingly, Rio Rondo had a bit that matched almost exactly (just a little fancier).

I have to thank Braymere Custom Saddlery's tack tips for helping make this one of my best bridles.  I skived all the leather, punched holes using a mechanical pencil, made real tongue buckles, and sealed the leather based on her instructions.  On the browband, the cheek pieces and throatlatch are separated by a leather lace that is threaded back on itself to make sort of a braided knot.

I was actually at camp for a friend's wedding, and snuck out to the barn...hence the jewelry.

The saddle is a nylon and leather saddle with silver lacing.  I'm sure it was nice at one point...now the outer fabric layer is threadbare and torn, exposing the plastic-y layer underneath.  On the model saddle, I sewed a layer of fabric onto a pleather layer and edged it with ribbon.  Then, the fabric was aged using sand paper, slashing with the back side of an X-acto knife, and "dirtied" with many light washes of watercolor paint and a dusting of chalk pastels.  The conchos were domed using a technique from Rio Rondo's website and colored over with black Sharpie marker, then wiped off unevenly to look tarnished.  They were glued onto leather conchos which had been sewn onto the saddle.

 

 

I used a Rio Rondo resin saddle tree, but sanded the horn smaller and figured out a better way to cover it than their instructions.  Basically, I cut one piece of skiver with the seam up the center front.  To match the color, I used a piece of the same skiver on the cantle, and lined it with tooling leather for stiffness.  All of the leather was aged with sandpaper in places where the real saddle had worn.  In the picture below, you can just see the wear leather at the top of the fender.  These are fully adjustable stirrups (though with regular buckles, I didn't want to deal with miniature Blevins buckles!)

 This method of "tying" the lead rope comes from a camp wrangler.  It's just a loop of rope threaded through the hole in the saddle, and hooked over the horn.  It keeps the horn free for a hand-hold, and comes loose quickly in an emergency, but doesn't slide loose on its own.  The tapaderos make this saddle unusable for most show events, but much safer for trail rides.  The rivets are made from straight pins.

 

The blanket is pretty straight-forward: a wool blanket with synthetic wear strips.  This was made with craft felt and the same pleather as the saddle, but with the fleecy underside peeled off.  (Of course, the day I took most of the pictures, someone had used a different blanket.  But you can see the normal gray one in the first picture.)  I left off the tape labels, as I didn't think I could write that small.

So that's my homage to the sort of tack I've always ridden in.  It isn't a pretty set of tack, and doesn't do very well in tack shows, but I like it.  :)