I am forever grateful I was allowed the time to thoroughly refurbish and restore this fascinating old piece, and learn what it had to teach me. This post is very long and covers 3 weeks of intense work. You just might learn something about the skill of restoring these old TSII (and other) silver tape saddles.
I started October 1 with the red-and-white corona blanket, which has its own post here. When the corona was done, on Nov. 8, I was already working out in my mind where to start with the rest. The job was daunting. Replacing all hardware and missing silver tape, fastening down errant but fragile tape, fixing lost color, polishing and cleaning, oiling and a new cinch were all indicated. My initial estimate was two weeks. For once (amazingly) it took only 15 days (Nov 8 to 23); three of those days were dedicated, i.e. nothing else going on (very rare!). One might ask why the corona took so long; the answer is we were on the road, traveling as far as AZ, so that much of the corona work was done upon return.
There will be a second post showing the finished saddle on 8 different horses, demonstrating the range of its unusual size.
I started this seriously challenging job by focusing on one small area with easily-done fixes. One of the pommel caps had fallen off. Near that cap were the seat's 3 tiny silver spots, and I started replacing them with ikandis, that is, iron-on silver spots. (Actually the first thing done was to polish the horn cap, a sterling concho handmade by Carol Williams.) This photo shows #325 in its 'before' stage, with all circular spots still painted-silver.
The TSII used painted-silver from circa 1979 to c. 2005. With time this material turned grey and grainy; after several stages of intermediate silver techniques, I had fallen in love with iron-ons in 2006. Their ease of use, long-lasting adhesive and non-tarnishing gleam has become the TSII standard. Can you spot the improvement? (pun only partly intended):
Below, arrows point to the new spots. The cantle spots are still painted. Note that this shot also shows the original state of the upper off serape; it is missing its silver tape network, and only the prism tape (color) diamonds remain.
The ikandis were one of the easiest restoration choices to make. (I do tend to start with the easy parts!) One merely had to hold the hot iron steady enough; no other prep was needed. In this shot the cantle binding is halfway through being ikandied. For the cantle I did have to customize some spots to a smaller size.
In any restoration, conservation, repair or rebuilding of these old silver parade saddles, holding down errant silver tape is always going to be the biggest challenge. "Errant" = lifting, flyaway, falling-off. The silver tape adhesive tends to loosen after about 4 years if exposed to air and use. Decades of fixing old silver tape work has taught me that it breaks most where the leather flexes the most: at the tops of the fenders, the curves of shoulders, and the tops of serapes and bridle parts. I knew I'd need something strong for #325's fender strip tops. They were large enough to qualify for tying down with Mylar tinsel, a technique I call My-tying. The arrow (below) points to the single stitch used to hold down the tape (in addition to glue). Normally this area is hidden under the seat jockey.
The other arrow points to some corner tape which had lifted. I treated it with Jewelry Glaze, my new trick for this saddle.
The challenge, indeed, was holding things down. No. 325 could not qualify for My-tying everywhere. Its design was too complex, too full of small detail and thin lines, and it had all those pieces of prism tape. To completely disassemble the saddle and tie down every bit of tape by piercing its leather on both sides with a needle chisel was unthinkable; all that would risk complete destruction, plus I didn't have the time. Nor could I entirely rebuild it with ikandis; ditto, this was a conservation job, not a total replacement. From the beginning I believed there was only one way to logically proceed: I had to set aside my prejudices against glues and find some kind of sealant. I figured a thick strong clear coating would go a long way towards both replacing the missing adhesive and protecting the thin metal tape. Call it gluing down above and below.
Wanting something beyond mod podge, I took Art Deco's Triple Thick, which I had on hand for my still-unfinished carousel resincast Ziggy (blog post here), and re-glued/painted the pommel cap and horn with it as a test. To my great relief it worked well. The stuff thinned wonderfully with water though I cleaned my brushes with soap at the end of each day. The combination of adhesive and protectant was irresistible, although the glaze took longer to dry than Aleene's. The TSII has a long track record of trying out new technologies on customers' tack pieces. Sometimes you just have to gamble.
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| Showing the Triple Thick jar |
N.A. XVI, my current benchside log of tackmaking notes, has 16 pages on #325 sans corona. In contrast, what photos I took are few and uncoordinated (!); but there are enough to tell the story. After I brushed glaze over the edges of silver parts on fenders, skirts and taps, I switched to working on the bridle to let things dry.
This is the bridle before. Near cheekstrap: note the broken silver tape and its missing spot at the strap end. The tape had been tied down with waxed linen thread, a blunt-instrument way of staving off lift but one which worked. I would choose to keep using this trick for this saddle.
The peeled-off old silver was stuck into the tack notebooks.
Here's the same cheekstrap with everything peeled off, the leather cleaned (rubbing alcohol and scraping) and a new piece of silver tape ready to go. The pattern of squares is clearly seen on the leather. When the tape is placed, finger pressure will show guiding dimples. Stamping silver tape is, as always, a one-time-use material. You muff it, you gotta start over! But tape is cheap. This stamping is not done with a hammer or mallet; wrist strength is enough.
This shot shows the famous old TSII manganese bronze stamps, made in 1979 with the help of a friend (Amy Helen Hurst) in jewelry class. I carved them from wax, she cast them and I set them in wooden dowel handles. You could say the TSII itself was born from these 2 priceless stamps, the square and the diamond. I made all my silver Parade saddles with them, from #017 onwards -- all the way to the end of my stamped-silver era, with #447 in 2008, Eleanor's all-ikandi set. Of course they are invaluable for restorations.
I love the little details of #325: there's tiny notches in the noseband to allow for the encircling linen thread stitches or ties (below, at bottom). There's no hole in the leather, it would have weakened it too much, so these ties are not really stitches. I didn't have tiny needles then, and apparently the visual ugliness did not weigh! The cheekstraps did not have those notches; apparently the straps were too thin to risk even that. Here's a brief shot of the browband and noseband before, with one new buckle on a strap. All of the old galvanized steel buckles were taken off and replaced by handmade stainless steel ones. Even as early as 1991, when Art Deco was made, I was hammering my wire buckles; it gave them strength and beauty.
Fully restored, like-new cheekstraps!
The spots on the strap end, where the poll bent and was used the most, were painted-silver and are now silver nail-polish. That was as close as I could come to the sometimes-conflicting goals of preserving original design yet coming up with a workable and lasting replacement. The browband got new silver. Here's a view of the face drop and its colors, somewhat ahead of my narrative:
I see I haven't mentioned replacing the fender buckles with stainless steel ones, or glazing the skirts, taps and lower serapes, cleaning them first. In the case of the tapaderos, disassembly was the rule for complete cleaning. "Microbrushes and Q-tips died in the service of this resto." I did find out that stroking verdigrised microbrushes on rubbing-alcohol-wetted paper towels cleaned them very well. Somewhere early on the rein ferrules and face chains were polished. (Ole cheers to my tub of Wright's Coppper Cream!)
One great challenge with #325 was replacing lost parts. Remember the upper offside serape? This was the largest part missing from the entire saddle.
Although this photo doesn't show it well, many pieces of red prism tape had somehow faded, gone pinkish. This loss of color didn't apply to the blues or golds! Go figure... I replaced as many red diamonds as I could. That was easy compared to coming up with a silver tape 'network.' Judy called these 'framing side bits.' There were no patterns other than the actual design sheet; apparently this was before I kept patterns. Alas for decades of envelopes -- they started too late, at #368! So I traced this part from the saddle's near side.
Yes it was a bit hair-raising placing this. The serapes could not be taken off. But in the end things aligned. Repeated layers of glaze helped hold down this area, one of the worst offenders in terms of bending. Missing blue prism tape was also replaced; an example is the upper left thin curve of the larger right arc.
Speaking of layers, I found the hard way that too heavy a glaze coat would result in crazing (crackle). This is news how?! Thinner coats and water helped considerably.
A later step, after all the glaze had dried and after silver repairs, was oiling. I hesitated to soak this piece in black dye, preferring the combination of Lexol and Dr Jackson's Hide Rejuvenator [Dr J's] to return color as well as preserve leather. Lexol, brushed on, tended to leave a 'dusted' effect:
While Dr J's, applied by finger over the Lexol dust, gave a velvety-dark look and smelled like leather.
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We've reached the breastcollar, a separate country. Everything I'd learned had to be applied all over again! Here's a close-up of the original buckles and their wiring: galvanized steel wire, dark grey and quite oxidized after 33 years.
And here's the hardware taken off the breastcollar and replaced with stainless steel, my standard for silver-color wire since 1999. Unfortunately I misjudged the size of the wrapping wire -- it was 26ga, not 24ga -- and this error caused me to break the neckstrap's buckle lace. I squeezed it too tightly, trying to get that thick 24ga to behave. This was the first, and luckily only, piece of leather I had to actually replace for the whole restoration. When you're trying to retain as much material as possible, this was regrettable but forgivable.
The drops were in relatively good shape and only needed a bit of cleaning. Their hanging rings, which had turned green, were replaced. Below: cleaning those hanging-ring holes is how I got verdigris on my microbrushes in the first place --! Attack both sides,...
The drops' chain links were tarnished. Bad news: I could not find an equivalent-size new chain. Disaster: I'd have to polish all 40 links -- !! Two per drop, ten drops for the breastcollar and ten for the serapes,... So that is what I did. "Many Q-tips died, et al."
Below is as close as I can come to proving how tarnished the links were. The difference was too subtle for my camera to catch. The first polishing scared me because the results looked goldish, thus indicating brass, something which didn't fit in with my ideals for this glorious piece, so rich with sterling. I held the polished links up to some sterling wire and realized that clean sterling has a golden tone to it, and that they matched! Aluminum (the silver tape) is blueish. Yes, silver has different colors! but in applications as small as these, it's usually not a problem.
This shot also shows how dirty the drops could get. Gentle stroking with rubbing alcohol with microbrushes and Q-tips took care of that. Below: all the new stainless hanging rings laid out. This view shows the lifting of silver panels on the breastcollar, particularly on the off side and where the off shoulder meets the chest. It took several layers of glaze to stabilize this spot.
Above is also a good view of some missing silver tape, the outer border of the blue on the leading edge of the off side shoulder field. This was replaced with fresh, and like everything else, coated in Glaze along the edges.
Very late in the game, here's an earlier shot showing how crumpled the near side* of the chest shield was when I first got this saddle, amoung other things. This was the second most damaged place, and it was delicate work gently coaxing it to unfold and go back to being flat. *Off side as viewed from its front, near viewed from sitting in the saddle.
Back at the restoration bench, I experienced a combo of queasiness and excitement at peeling back the entire chest shield top, on a quest for cleanliness and fresh prism tape. The top shot shows the original find,
while the lower shot shows new prism tape in place, as well as cleaned older stuff. This is as revealing as it gets.
To give you hope, let me show you a couple shots of the finished and restored breastcollar. This first view is a sneak from the next post, wherein all kinds of horses got to wear it.
The rack shot is the final goal, and this one caught the colors.
After more than 2 weeks (plus 5 weeks if you count the corona), and in a sense after more than 30 years restoring TSII model silver Parade sets, the job was done. It took some time to accumulate the oumph to hold a photo session; I passed up the last fall days with their clear sunny weather (too busy), and had to shoot indoors. When I did gather the herd I thought would fit, the results were educational, marvelous and fun! But that's for the next post.
