TSII #458 Design and Test Piece

 

The design process of a new saddle is always interesting, because each one is different.  TSII #458's process has been more interesting than most.  The piece started out as a copy of an existing saddle, but changed its mind radically, and is now based on the Year of the Fire Horse.  It incorporates bleeding-edge technology for me, and to beat all -- who's surprised?! -- it's taking a good 7 months to get off the ground.  Yet how wonderful it is to be making tack again --!  This post will cover those months and the all-important test piece, which hopefully will become part of the new saddle... the first I've made in 6 years.

No. 458's story starts with the so-called Russian Parade Saddle.  Yes, I will eventually (!) blog about that one, but meanwhile enjoy a seldom-seen view of it, the front (above).  Ever since my road-to-Damascus moment about it (November 4, 2024), I'd been meaning to build a copy.  That resolution held until October 18 of 2025:  nearly a year.  Those 11+ months bred in me a determination to make another supreme silver Parade saddle for myself.  I had last made one in 1997, twenty-nine years ago (#400, Rainbow Brilliance).

But the mystery is how hard it was to even start that.

 Ever since my second book was published, in August of 2025, I've been trying to get back to tackmaking.  A couple of bridle sets for customers and one pair of reins is all we have to show for over 7 months [August 30 to April 8].  I suppose I should add my NaMoPaiMo pony!  But the reins, above, just did not feel right.  They were an odd attempt at combining two fields of endeavor -- braiding and silverwork -- that don't always mix well.  Sometimes they do, true;  but not here.  As artists say, I'd lost my Muse.  I was also insanely distracted by other factors and just plain growing older, but this is not the place for that,...

In a Florida hotel, Feb 27 in the middle of the night, I asked myself what would happen if I just let it go.  If I suspended the requirement to make "a perfect Sue saddle" and instead went after "a good interesting saddle."   If I turned what was left of the Muse loose.  To my surprise (why are these things always a surprise?), with the additional inspiration of "Year of the Fire Horse," an amazing saddle design came out.

Of this first drawing, I can say I liked the breastcollar best.   This pass shows the combination of the silver engraved plates and the strip of tiny gold spots, balancing the 2 metallic colors.  The circles within the silver "flames" represented jewels:  rubies, citrines, czs [cubic zirconias].  

I had made tack with jewels before, so this was not unknown territory.

  

Our only illustration of the pinkness of the rubies

The jewels themselves came from the Tucson Gem Show, some of them acquired so long ago that that company (Gems-4-Less) no longer carries them.  The costs are buried in the past but have always been astoundingly affordable for me:  A packet of dozens of little bitty grade C emeralds, say, would cost around $30.  Rubies, sapphires, citrines:  I've got them all, except that my memory in FL gave me a large number of big czs.  When I got home, that turned out to be eight little ones.  The re-design process is always a whole new evolution.  The current design sheet looks like this:

  Of course it is a work in progress and will change as time and work passes over it.  

Now we come to IMTM (International Model Tackmaker's Month) (or Tack Month).  Knowing I could not possibly finish a whole saddle in so short a time, I signed up for just the breastcollar.  Even that needed a test piece.  I had so many things to test!  -- leather color, gem color, shape of flame pieces, re-learning engraving and how to stick things together.  Above all, how to stick things together:  With so many pieces, soldering on back loops like I did with the Goehring  Goehring Breastcollar Engraved  was unthinkable.  As readers may know, this tackshop is famous for hating adhesives.  And yet there was no clear answer.  The solution to this dilemma will play out with the making of this saddle.

I started with the Near Cheekstrap.  It only needed two flame pieces, made from 24 ga. Argentium.

 All went well.  

 The intended horse is Kotinga, but I don't trust his coat on the tack bench.  Too easily scratched,... Spiro, with his scuffed gloss, is perfect for the job.  

A critical design decision was to use only garnets and citrines.  My rubies just did not match; they were a pink color with blue tones in it.  In the event the garnets came out a deep glowing red which I liked very much.
 

Although making decisions like hardware choices had been too overwhelming for the 'greatest ever' perfect Sue saddle, on this one simple questions like "what kind of poll buckle" were easily answered.  Twisted wire, of course.  Never mind if it is not formal enough for the flames;  it's my fav.

 The bit blank, seen here unfinished, is the only part of the "original perfect" saddle to exist besides the reins.  I knew I wanted to make a miniature copy of my full-scale Santa Paula bit, obtained in Nogales Mexico in 2002, the last time I was south of the border.

 It is amazing what one accumulates in a lifetime of loving tack.

Not that I'll be able to duplicate the tiny blue-and-silver edge-barring.  But maybe you can understand why that is not important now.  Yeah, I have a collection of full scale tack, which could make a cool blog post,... some day,...  No saddles, but headgear and horse brasses,...    

I will end this post with a sneak peek of the breastcollar as it sits right now, before tooling.  You will agree with me I've bitten off a mighty lot to chew.  Sometimes that's the path the Muse follows.  The only obstructions/commitments in the way are a couple of customer orders promised unrealistically and a lack of funds.  I can sell horses but I'm not sure about the customers.

 Wish me luck, and thank you for your patience.

 

Florida Hiking Vignettes

Our recent Florida canoeing trip was heavily photographed, unlike many others in the past.  While the total hours paddling was a modest 35.5, the photos taken ran to many hundreds, taken with 5 different cameras.  An equal (or greater) number of hours were hiked and birded.  This post attempts to condense five separate days of hiking shots, and contains, amoung other things, a nearly-thousand-year-old tree, a rare White Dove, a beautiful blue spring with freedivers, six trails and two model horses!  Thirty-four pix!  vignettes my foot,...  Any paddling posts are going to have to wait.  

Blogging is a good way to commemorate, if not completely recall, these family trips.  Come with me on what may have been our last journey South with the canoe --- and enjoy it as much as we did! 

Colavita stealing the show

We started, Feb 20th, at Fort Island Beach, on the Gulf, and walked some local trails there.  One is called Redfish Hole trail, a name made nicer by my recent addiction to Swedish Fish.  :)  While some of these pix of course have horses in them, surprise, more do not.  I refuse to completely abandon this lifelong habit but often it's just handier not having to set them up.  Below:  beautiful palm forest with cabbage palm (sabal palmetto), Florida's most common wild palm tree.

 Most of Redfish Hole trail is more like this, with pines, scrub oaks and grasses on sand.

While we were based in Homosassa, Chassahowitzka WMA [Wildlife Management Area] was next.  On Feb 21st we went to a small but very interesting trail, Big Cypress Boardwalk.  We'd never been there before.  This was a one-trick-pony place and I unfortunately did not shoot the forest along the sides of the nice boardwalk.  But I did run and hike back and forth along it at least 3 times, pent up for exercise. 

Photo by George Young

The trouble with 900-year-old trees is you can't really appreciate them unless you're right up next to them.  Unless you've seen other Cypresses and know how big they can get, they look ho-hum.  On the rivers we've seen trees larger than this.  Cypresses are tremendously individualistic and the older they are the freakier they get.  (This post has some cypress pix in the middle:  Forest Primevals.)

 The signs claimed this tree was hollow and thus spared from the turn-of-the-20th-century loggers.  I have to say it's unusual for a cypress this old not to be 'topped' or have its top snapped off.  Topping usually doesn't stop them at all;  they keep growing in the most amazing ways.

By bending sidewise and using creative zoom I got the whole thing in one frame.  Let the distortion of the railings give you a clue as to true size.

 On the 23rd we had an exciting multi-trail day.  Deep in Chassahowitzka WMA we made our way first to Cypress Circle trail.

This trail encircled a large cypress stand or 'dome' as they are called.  The domes typically are flanked by palmettos and then oak forest.  A mere foot of elevation in the soil makes all the difference;  cypress domes sit on poorly-drained places while the oaks and pines like the well-drained sandy ground.

This was a long, open, peaceful and yes hot walk.  The transition between the flora zones was as abrupt as the above shot shows.  In no way is Florida consistent with her forests!  The below view shows the tops of the dome appearing beyond the palmettos.  At this time of year [Feb], the cypress leaves are just barely beginning to appear.

Our second trail was right across the dirt parking lot from the first.  Alas, no turkeys.

Though this trail was shorter, it seemed as long since we were tireder.  The scruffy oak forests showed uncovered sand in places.  Occasional pricky pear appeared.  Open parts revealed dramatic, statuesque pine trees:  Sand Pine and Slash Pine mostly.

This trail also gave us a view of baby Turkey Oaks.  Would you believe those little burning-red sprouts are actually oak trees?

After a typical in-car lunch, we left the dirt parking lot and headed out for our third goal of the day, Buford Springs.  The road there gave me this post's frontispiece -- I thought the S-shaped curl was a great calendar shot.  I saw it in the rearview and asked to stop and shoot it.  This view probably captures the essence of driving in Florida with George:  We are miles from anywhere.

 Buford Springs is a diving place, a natural spring hole in the Florida limestone.

 It is reached by a half-mile trail wide enough for scuba-diving-equipment carts but closed to cars.

This time I shot some side views.  It may not be Tarzan's jungle but it is reminiscent of Fakahatchee Preserve State Park, which I have been to and which really is as wildly tropical as Florida gets.

Buford Springs trail boasted some fine Epiphyte clusters.  So far we'd seen only 2 kinds, of which this grass-like one is the most common.  The plant does not harm the host tree in any way;  it just uses its structure as a convenient place to hang out.

We were on the trail for birds, and not involved with diving in any way.  This made our contact with divers rather, umm, socially shy.  Birding is a solitary sport;  diving, not at all -- they always go in pairs or threes.  As canoers who have paddled FL springs, we could appreciate this incredible body of beautiful blue water deep in the forest;  but as onlookers, we did not even dip our toes (though I did fish out some trash when no one was looking).  

It is so fascinating to see a water sport of which we know so little, so close up.  Those plumes of bubbles are from scuba divers already beneath the lip of the cave.  Below:  the water emerges from the springs and flows away into the forest in a river.  As I've told on my FB, this was my first time seeing freedivers.  They could stay under for up to 45 seconds (we timed them) by holding their breath. 

It was so beautiful and peaceful to sit there and watch them. 

 After we left and were safely alone again on the trail back, I indulged myself with a horse pic.  I'd brought one foal.  (Cozmic One to the hobby.)  My original intention was to name him in FL but a week before departure he came up with one on his own:  Cahuenga [p. kah-wenga].  Those who know me will not be surprised to learn that Cahuenga was the street upon which Edward Bohlin's saddle shop was located.

Didn't I say I'd bitten off more than I could chew with this post?!?  We'll finish off with 2 more places, either of which could've been a whole post in themselves, and the second will feature Colavita (Breyer's Miss Independence) seen in the beginning.

On Feb  27, after we'd changed bases to Apalachicola, Salinas Park on St Joe's Peninsula gave me my closest insight yet into the mindset of a trophy hunter.    

 I really can't describe it other than to say I went temporarily crazy.  The desire to secure [a pic of] a fabulous rare animal swept over me and all else fell before it.  I'm afraid a family squabble happened because of this bird.  Such passion -- as though it were a unicorn or a white stag!  In fact, it was merely a leucistic Mourning Dove.

 It's not like I'd never seen leucistic or partial-albino animals or even birds before, although the Mourning Dove was a first.  It was clear from the start what it was.  I scrambled with my cell, but in the end the best pix were taken with my digital Fuji.

 The Fuji allowed better close ups and finer focus.  The flock was moving around on the grass and I could easily get them in view.  

 It was an amazingly pretty bird.  I snapped and snapped.  I chased it across the road.  I think my total came to 18 pictures, clear evidence of besottedness.  I even took a movie.  Let's see if Blogger will let me upload it:

 The lesson of the White Dove, if there is one, would be to pay more attention to the efforts of your birding partner when he is trying to help you, and not cling so hard to your own frame of reference,...

 On Feb 27 we went to St George's Island and the East Slough Overlook trail of the Dr Julian G Bruce SGI State Park.  There are some very nice boardwalks along this trail.  The day was seriously foggy.  I'm not going to brighten these photos.  Here's the long boardwalk without Colavita/Miss Independence,

 and with her.

If you're curious, I have whitened her mane.  That's Dry the Sea's Orange Hackamore, which should be familiar to readers.  Dry's Orange  Here's the other side:  of the horse?  of the trail!

Although it's not captured in the above, there was a Bald Eagle nesting tree in that rank of pines.  Alas, although signs were up to prevent hikers from coming near it, it was abandoned by the birds.

Alone, out here in the wild, on trips, yes I do sometimes ride them, at least pictorially.

 

This shot was taken at our turnaround point, a bridge across the marsh.  It shows a little of the fog racing past.  This day really was rather unusual with its moving fog.  I liked the path of the lighter reeds showing the water channel.

 Something I haven't covered much in these FL posts is the flowers.  My dear travel partner is extremely devoted to shooting flowers, sometimes taking a dozen shots of the same bloom.  But here I was interested myself.  These lovely yellow trumpets were only found in a few places along the mile-and-a-half trail.

 I was unable to resist touching.  Don't ask what flowers these are;  unfortunately, for all our knowledge, we did not know their name, although we've encountered (and shot) them before.

 My last photo for St George's Island is this one, from a pullover on E Beach Gulf drive, on the way back home.  It captures the faraway tropical feel of my Florida experiences:  straggly palm trees, salt grass meadows, and endless distances over the water.  

 We had some good times, and we'll be back.

 

A Minor Miracle

 Since my blogging efforts have been bogged down by biting off more than I could chew (three weeks of Florida, hundreds of photos from 5 cameras, hiking birding canoeing), I am trying a much smaller subject.  I've just completed a week of dusting my entire herd -- deep cleaning, rearranging, sorting out sales pieces, cleaning and repairing shelves, documenting lost entries -- and in the process, a minor miracle happened.  I found Rigel's lost horn.

We last saw him on December 13, when I posted this forlorn portrait to my FaceBook:

 At that time this little Rigel unicorn did not have a personal herd name.  Since then, he's acquired not only a name but parents.  Uffington pretty much had to be the sire, in my herd named Albedo;  the dam's choice came to rest on the satin cremello 'Girls Rule the World' Winx/Emerson, in my herd named Kiss Away.  They all three have those Breyer cremello blue eyes.  His name comes from a 9-book science fiction series by James S. A. Corey, the Expanse:  "Zehatan"  from Expanse #8, Tiamat's Wrath.  It's a country in a new galaxy (one of 1373 such, though not all are named).  I refer you to exhaustive science fiction series for a ton of names -- !

So I came home from Florida and dragged myself into dusting the whole herd, something that hadn't happened in at least 8 years and probably more.  The glitter in their dust, PearlEx accumulating from 5 NaMoPaiMos, had been bothering me more and more.  The stuff is toxic.  I put on a mask and ran the air filter.  Shelf by shelf, I took off the scarves and ribbons lining them, shook my head at the damage (one shelf had rusted and took some sanding) and went at it.  These 3 photos show how I moved through the job, starting at the uppermost left and going top to bottom.

 Above and below taken March 21. 

This last shot, near the end, was taken March 25.  There are 2 shelves hidden from view at the bottoms.  For all my trying, only a little shelf space was gained.  :(  You can spot the Rigel foal, fourth in from the lowest right corner, beyond Vail, Winter Wonderland and the Stone Irish Draft.  He is next to the cremello Winx.  When he fell, he hit the electric register below (see next pic).

 So much for biting off more than I could chew!!  I guess I needed some deep spring cleaning;  and the horses have always been the first and best recipients of my intentions.  I had forgotten about Zehatan's missing horn tip, and was completely astounded when I spotted it lying on the carpet, next to the air conditioner I keep down there.

(What?! You don't keep spare air conditioners on the floor of the tack room?) 

 I can only guess that his original accident ricocheted the tip onto a higher shelf, and when I pulled the scarf off, I flipped it onto the floor.  Maybe I just dislodged it from where it had been hiding;  air conditioners (never mind all the other junk!) have lots of hiding places.  Miracle indeed.

I laid out the tools and supplies needed for repairing one unicorn horn on March 27.  The tip is in the faience bowl, the spool stainless steel wire is for the pin, the blue case holds drill bits, the orange tube is my old Ambroid glue (at least 30 years old by now but still good) and the pin vise has its own braided leather handle.

 In the process, I changed my mind.  The gauge of the pin went from 28 to 25 and it got a lot shorter.  I couldn't drill very deep and had to content myself with ramming it into place by hand, before gluing.

 This final portrait is brought to you by my magnifying glass.  I love how his ears appear.  A unicorn should have shaggy ears, or perhaps we could say fluffy?  This is truly my herd's only unicorn, so we have just the one data point.  Yes, the lines show where I glued on his chip, but I'm so happy to have him whole again and I truly don't mind.

 Good luck to all who are trying to mend broken things, cleaning what needs cleaning and sanding off the rust.