Starting the Roby Canyon Hackamore

It is difficult to create in miniature something you have neither photo nor drawing for.  I am proceeding from the memory of a single encounter with a young Appaloosa mare and her rider, and their hackamore (which I fell in love with on the spot).  The encounter happened late on a June day in the Black Hills of South Dakota; it was on the road through Roby Canyon, which is in the western edge of the Hills.  Although the meeting was short, I felt it was important, and almost immediately afterwards I wrote down some details on the back of the bird list (the usual place for such things).  This lean paragraph is my best evidence for what I'm now trying to build.

"Bosal 1/2", Natural w/ dk brn nose, banded heel.  Slit-braid hangar [sic], no deco.  Fiador light-colored w/ dark fleck, tied w/ wooden beads!!  Mecate black, white & gray.  Matching hobbles w/ 2 braided connector hangars [sic], w/ banded buttons!"

[Having an ex-pilot in the family, I do tend to spell "hanger" the airplane way.  :)   It's hard enough to learn that the equine term for the headstall for a bosal is not headstall but hanger.  : (  The same ex-pilot is also a military buff, leaving me trying to remember that a sword's supporting belt and strap is also called a hanger.]

The bosal was obviously the place to start.  And here is where fate stepped in, in the shape of Ichabad Crane!!!  Alas, alack, for 20+ years my measurements and formulas have been for a true 1:9 model horse, and my bosal recipe is perfected for:  the Stone ISH.  When I started the bosal for the Roby Canyon Hackamore I was more concerned with the fact I was going to be putting interweaves in the nosebutton when my memory clearly told me there were none (this is the TSII!!  showing off fancy braidwork matters), than worried about whether to allow for the turns of the mecate AND the fiador.  Of course it would fit.
I got the sidebuttons properly located relative to the eyes.

 The pin shank in the middle is holding space for the future heel knot concho's pin.

Finished.

My adventures falling in love with Ichabad/True North, named Dry The Sea (chronicled in the previous post) were beside the point.  It was only natural to set him on the tack bench, right?  Natural to somehow switch my attention from an unchosen Trad to this intoxicating bay, so popular, so long desired.  I'd shaped the bosal to him, hadn't I?

Natural to make the fiador for him, with more attention and size than I'd ever made a fiador before.  It was braided from 6 threads instead of spun from the normal 4.
Below is the fiador tied in a traditional hackamore knot.

 This picture (below) shows the mass of thread the wooden bead had to encompass (the 4 strands below the jaw, right near the tip of the out-of-focus strap).  It also shows one of the files I used to make the bead with.  It turned out beastly hard to get all that mass through the bead.  At model scales, Roby's two beads became one.

I made the wooden bead from a bamboo skewer from a Chinese restaurant, by the way -- bamboo polishes up in scale better than most woods.

I did research to find how the jaw strap attached - and then chucked it and just cut a larger strap to hold a slit.  The full scale Roby hackamore had used a jaw strap, to keep the cheekstraps away from the eyes.

And there you have it:  I'd switched horses in midstream and hadn't realized it.
True North, aka Ichabad Crane, aka Dry The Sea, was truly a much bigger horse.
There wasn't going to be enough room for the mecate.
I should have known.

On a different subject,
Why did this encounter, unusual but not rare, inspire me so?  I've seen other riders while we were out birdwatching.  I've got the whole world of Internet images to draw upon.  I've got years of experience as to what training hackamores look like (which was of great use when it came to buckling down to this piece).  Perhaps it was the wooden beads, obviously an easy way out of tying those bothersome fiador knots -- they looked so cute.  Perhaps it was the color of the mecate; I'd never before made one with gray.  Perhaps it was the stunning beauty of the hobbles combined with the headgear -- I'd never before seen braided connectors used to hang hobbles with, let alone matching colored ones.  (In the paragraph, 'banded' means "having contrasting braided interweave rings.")  Duh.

Perhaps it was the beauty of the horse.  She was a stunner, a blue roan with a patchy snowflake hip blanket and plenty of spots.  Spirited, barely under control, young (of course), great conformation.  Perhaps it was the friendliness of the rider; she let me approach and pet and gawk.  There was a second rider, on a pale palomino, but these two merely threw the App into relief.  Geo and I had been noting the tracks of two shod horses on the dirt road and knew they were ahead of us, but only chance had caused them to turn around before we did.  The moment I saw them I transitioned from the birder's best public-relations (you have to evolve this if you birdwatch long enough) to the heart of the tackmaker, well knowing what I was seeing.  "Rosie" the mare rolled her eyes at me.  The rider, however, complimented my hat three times.  : )

Image from California Classics via Google

Why would a supposedly-Trad-scale model horse be so large?  One might as well ask why one's artistic work expands when one's spirit does.  This isn't the place for such weighty questions.  I'll settle for measuring Dry The Sea.  He appears to be 6  5/8" at the withers, which translates to <oh, this is shocking!  My math works out at very close to 1:9:  1:9.05 !!>
<Try it yourself:  Divide 6.625 into 60, the inches of a fifteen-hand horse>

I'm supposed to be deciding whether to make another bosal, bigger this time, for the horse I've so clearly let sweep me away.  Spluttering -- there's water in my seas yet -- I can only say this will take more time.  I want to be working on mecates right now, and I've started.  I'm pleased to say I dyed some thread last night, and this is what it looked like:

Just that amount of thread perfectly used up the dropperful of rubbing alcohol I'd started with.  No leftovers.  I like the imperfect effect of home-dyeing; I think it much more natural, more true to real horsehair, in this case gray horsehair.
Stay tuned while I spin.  Mecates usually take a week, but we'll just see what happens.

The Traditional Loot shots

Traditional is the word here:  Eight of the 11 new models I brought home were 1:9 scale.  (One of the miscreant 3 was larger.)  I admit this has been a year of largesse, if not excess!   If seen in its complete form -- showing every model that I obtained at BreyerFest this year -- my traditional Loot picture shows a staggering array, greater than any that have gone before.  Think of this shot as the "total gross:"

One saddle, one china, two foals, two bulls, two blankets, two geldings, three halters, three boxed Trads, four Stablemates and four adult stallions.  One Hartland, one Freeman-McFarlin (I think).  One big-ticket item, bet you can't guess which -- !!   And a great many dreams come true, including a glorious driving pair of bays.  Total gross, 18 models.

But now consider the "net" version:  11 models.  One of the boxes and three of the Stablemates are pickups for friends.  One friend kindly let me have the blue SM.

The Saffron is a direct body-to-body transfer with another horse, meaning I left home with a Geronimo and came home with a Saffron.  He cannot be counted as new!  Same name (Stargazer), same mold, same personality.  They do this sometimes.  Thanks to Heather for effecting this trade.  She wanted a tackmaking matte model and I wanted a colored glossy, so -- when both sides are happy -- !  He started his new phase by being my test-photo horse during NAN.

Now for the big-ticket item.  This horse cost considerably more than any of my others -- as much as six of them put together, more than three times my next most expensives.  But he was a pickup.  He'd been in the vet's hands for a year.  Remember?

The horse without his front legs, covered in scratches and rubs?  A carcass picked from a bodybox for five bucks.  A terrible accident left for dead.  You wouldn't recognize him now!!  At long last he is restored to his former glory.  I am deeply amazed at the artistry and hard work that went into this incredible restoration;  Jenn said it was extreme and she didn't know how to go about it for the longest time.  All cheers for this model vet who achieved the impossible:

He is much darker than Prince King, my earlier Regal red Arab; more so than these pix show.  The splendor of the old 1967 Hartlands shows through.  Well might they call them the Regal Series!!

I named him Maharajah... (last year was India...) ... as an equally kingly name, but it's barely regal enough.  When my husband heard this story and saw this horse, he asked, "Do you have classes for repaired horses?"  Stunned, I told him no.  What a thought.  But why not??  We have classes for everything else...  Surely this is a growing division!!

Oh and the boxed Icabad?  He's an 'investment' for later sale.

So now my total net Loot shot looks like this:

A little less greedy.
The two blankets were picked up in different places for different prices, but they should all be showing up in another Blanket Blog sometime soon.  As my interest continues in this subject, I'm collecting other private individuals' work and not just Breyer blankets.

The saddle came from Russia although the seller could not tell me the maker's name.  Subsequent research (thank you Heather again) is putting forth "Natalia Midnightline."  I still need to verify this.

The Duende/Straight Bet is well named, as he is just about the "straightest" model I own (Brasenose not with standing, hah!).  I needed the mold and I loved the color.

The little bluetail china was a no-brainer.  For decades I've had one just like that, only with a green mane.  The two together are irresistable:

Who says I don't collect chinas??  : )

The Brahma was also irresistable, also for a very old reason.  My grandfather had given his wife one of these as an aniversary present.  I'd seen it as a child and pestered Grandma until she gave it to me.  In 1979 I'd traded it for a Decorator (a Florentine 5-Gaiter).  You couldn't do that today, but I still wanted one.
And the buffalo is my BHR take for the year.

Everybody who saw this buffalo wanted to know about him.  I grew tired of telling the complexities and simply snapped "He's a BHR repaint!"  Or shorter still, "Not For Sale!!"  The whole tale is amost mysterious in its twists... surely my best buffalo story.  My buffalo conga again deserves its own post!  For now here's a look at his off side:

Here he is with my earlier BHR piece, the light brown Buffalo.  Brothers in Karen's collection, they are now reunited.  What they have seen together...

Last but never least, Most desired and most gloried in, Named before I got him and thus a sure sign of besottedness! is my obsessed-over Icabad and his luckily-found driving pair partner, Loughnatousa.  I'm not sure which one came first; probably the Copperfox, as Finnegan was released in 2015 and Rangoli happened in 2017.  Morgen Kilbourn sculpted them both, and from the day I saw True North I'd been wondering what kind of a pair these two molds would make.

As often happens, my desire for a particular model grew so slowly that by the time I really wanted him he was long sold out.  This was the case with Loughnatousa, or Superman Fabio as he is known.  (Don't you love these horses with 5 names?!  A.k.a. Irish Sport Horse.)  Copperfox produced 250 of them, and 10 semi-glossies, in 2016.  Having wanted one for years, I was blessed beyond all luck to stumble out of my CHIN room on Saturday night and find one within 15 minutes!  I had looked so hard all week...  I bargained her down and she then threw in 4 free books, making me feel like a monster of ingratitude.

That's not the most unusual part of the tale.  In the halls I spoke with a near-stranger who stared at me when I mentioned Loughnatousa.  "Loff-na-Toosa" I pronounced it, blithely ignoring the real Lock-na-two-sa and completely not knowing it is a famous Irish studfarm.  But she told me it was the name of a mythical tree, connected to healing and magic and..?!?  
I ws thrilled and decided to keep that his name for now.  Yet subsequent research has revealed no such thing.  If anyone out there knows what this name really means I'd love to hear about it --- !

 You may remember Rangoli, last year's Raffle model at BreyerFest.  He was a bay minimal-pinto on the True North.  I've never seen the ballot-box so stuffed as was his.  I myself spent $20 on tickets for him, twice and three times as much as I usually do.  I wanted him so bad!!  But of course the odds were astronomical.  I've entered the Raffle so many times over the years... this year was my 27th BreyerFest... never won yet.
So I trotted out my best defense.  I told BreyerHistoryDiva I'd just wait til they released him in bay and then I'd "etch my own!"  Not like I've never done this...  wink, wink, Rinker...   Imagine my astonishment when I saw Icabad Crane.

It was as though Breyer had read my comment.

I was so worried there wouldn't be any Icabads left.  I balanced my Friday morning tent ticket with standing in line for the Pit (Breyer Store).  It was a close call; remember the crowds!!  No one could tell us how many models we were limited to.  (The answer turned out to be "as many as you can carry, but only 1 Icabad per person.")  When I finally got there I grabbed without really picking, grabbed two other horses, saw the dinosaurs and grabbed 4 of them.  (The dinos were so wonderful there might be a future post on them!)  Successful, I bolted for the car, then bolted some more, back to the in-a-different-place-than-before tent line.  Said bolting really being trotting, as I was "training" for the 5K race too.

The Icabad's name came to me in a dream.

On Thursday afternoon, after photographing all 3 days of NAN,  I collapsed on the bed in 610 and took a wee nap.  In the dream the scene made sense:  I was running through a great sunlit shallow sea, waters flowing away, with a great peaceful sense of flying along, of striding...  But when I woke up I knew that name had come out of somewhere completely and totally Other.
Dry The Sea.

It's a habit of mine to get the Jaapi halters of the year, and 2018 was no exception.  Jaapi (p. yoppy) has consistently interpreted BreyerFest's themes.  Off To The Races translated into the racing stables' colors for Brass Hat, Justify and American Pharaoh.  I think they're neat.  With so much loot, I need them.
Happy Collecting!

The Sue Peet Bridle Set

This bridle was originally inspired by an earlier TSII piece, a headstall made in 2006 (Evans' 2nd headstall).  I'd always wanted to try another One-Ear that adjusted slip-fashion.  This bridle was also made as a test for Auction Barn for me, to see whether this venue would work for me.  It was completed in February of 2009 and had split reins.

The split reins themselves were inspired by a pair I'd made for K. Meekma in January, but differed in the details of the buttons.  These had Fan buttons, 9P 7B 1-3-3-1 (the 1-3-3-1 refers to the passes over and under of one finished outside strand, across the long axis -- a name I made up!), while Meekma's had 9P 8B  2-2-2-2s.  I loved my Fan buttons and thought they were amoung the prettiest in my repertoire, even though they were also one of my hardest buttons to braid!

But the March Auction Barn debut failed to meet reserve.

The next thing that happened was I chose to submit the bridle for the North American Nationals Auction ... and give it a new bit.  I must have gotten my engraving vise that February, because these bits were my very first sterling silver engraving efforts.  On the inside of one bit is picked out "09" and on the other is "SBY."

Sue Peet won that June auction.  The donation percentage was 50%.

The bridle was offered with a matching breastcollar and set of Romal Reins, to be made later but sold at the same donation percentage.  It took me til August to finish these.

Sue Peet later told me she never used them.... she just gloried in their beauty.  They were very well kept in their own airtight box.  When I first received them in 2018, they had been packed with fleece ... the first time I'd seen this in a lifetime of shipping model tack!
(She also purchased the Maximillian Bridle, a later NAN Auction piece.)

Ten years later, in the spring of 2018, at a local show, Susan Rudnicki Hurst told me Peet's health was going downhill.  Her disease had reached the point of barring live showing.  Hurst was dispersing some of her collection.  I had never forgotten the Fan Button Bridle set, feeling it was some of my best work.  I quickly came up with a proposal, and a commission was worked out.

In my turn, I too have not used these pieces, except for photographing them.  It seems that such high-calibre braidwork is doomed to spend large portions of its life tucked away or hung up.  Yet oh, how they enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame.  What glories may they not participate in -- what beautiful heads might they adorn -- !!

For so many years I've wished I had tack in hand to offer at BreyerFest.  This will be yet another test.

As of this writing the plan is to take offers on this Bridle Set and post them on MH$P.   I would like the closing to be Saturday the 14th, at 10pm EDT.  Your patience is appreciated while I deal with all the rest of BreyerFest, and a possibly recalcitrant tablet -- !  my only online link whilst in Kentucky.  If the winner is not present, shipping must be charged.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Collecting!

Note from the Future:  The winner of this set was Andrea Smith.

The KH2B Hackamore

This post is all about one piece of headgear, soon to be sold.... plus there's a sneak peek of another auction set at the bottom, BreyerFest bound.  As of this writing I'm still figuring out how to offer the hackamore!  I finished the KH2B in Colorado, and we'll see it here on many different sizes and colors of horses.  As per my previous post, it has a sister hackamore, and both were inspired by a much older piece.  I've named them all King's Herd's hackamores, so an appropriate title for this post could've been We Three Kings.  : )  The last pic shows all three.

KH2B stands for King's Herd's the second, B -- not "B" for second-finished (although it was completed well after my NaMoTackMo piece, KH2J) -- but "B" for "Brasenose."   In referring to these two new hackamores, I fell back on initials (Rio Rondo inspired no doubt) and my own practice of naming the piece after the horse it is most identified with. This happens whether I built it off that model or whether that model fell in love with it and insisted on wearing it the most.  (You know they do this.)  "J" stands for Jezail/Kaalee.

Readers of this blog will know this horse, Brasenose (above).  He was much in evidence when I needed to name these two pieces and the day with Jennifer pretty much settled it.  Braymere Saddlery.   He gives his name to this hackamore, but that does not mean it fits him perfectly.
(By the way he just invented this lay-down wood-background shot, which I wish I'd thought of earlier.)

This hackamore has character!  It was relatively simple to design buttons for the cheek - I took my cue from the red, and dk brown & rawhide will always be in style - and the silver beads are Hill Tribes. The curbstrap's tassel is dewaxed sinew, a trick I learned from Regine N. of Germany.  The glory of that beautiful braided-sinew curbstrap -- the most adjustable I've ever made, an inspired design that came to me out of nowhere -- is somewhat offset by the fixed length of the nosepiece.  In most of these pix the curb is on the 'middle' setting, and most muzzles are accommodated just fine.  But take a look:

See how the shank is higher than the mouth?  I'm not sure that's quite what's wanted.  (It could be a poorly-positioned shot.)  This Victrix has a big head and a fair-size muzzle.  Let's try another resincast:  Morgen Kilbourn's Maxixe [p. Mack-SEE-shay].

Oh much better!
This is a good piece for, shall we say, Not-Giant model horses?!
While we're on the subject of that curb, here's a close-up of the adjustment process.  (Another shot is in the previous post.)

The button and tassel must be inserted through one of the three slots, or slits, in its end.  I know the pic doesn't look like it, but both plier jaws are indeed through the second or middle slit.  The braided-thread keepers, or sliders, do indeed slide.  The nice thing about braided-sinew in tack is that it slides; it can be adjusted with gentle pressure.  What to do with the curb's end when you're using the smallest setting?  In this case I found I could tuck it into the curb and run the keeper up tighter to hold things.  The shot below shows this.

Incidentally this pony was the only red-colored horse in my photo shoot -- yet he came out looking just about the best of all.  He also is distinguished by being the only one shot wearing this hackamore with its very long crownstrap end tucked up in the cheekstrap, (through the connector actually), solving every problem.  "It can be done."

The beautiful headstall, with its fixed silver crownstrap-tip and its easy-sliding buckle (a cast Rio Rondo which I had nickel-plated), contains a rather unusual One-Ear slit.   Originally this was intended as a braided version of the lace headstall of the old King's Herd's hackamore.  I did try to make all 3 hackamores the same size!  But that slit wound up starting quite high on the head.  It appears to fit only the ears of the longest, largest heads.  Here's Victrix looking uncomfy:

And Jezail/Kaalee looking better ...  after all, she is the largest model in my photo-shoot.

The curb is set at its largest for this black mare's nose.

The KH2B manages to fit her, but only if you feel like racing, --- crouching low over her withers and leaning way forward!!  In other words the reins really are almost too short for so large a horse.  Again, they were made to exactly match the original old hackamore which I swear fit every horse in my herd.  I guess the average Trad was smaller back then.

The reins are on snaphooks for this very reason:  they can be easily detached.

Bottom line?  The best model for this hackamore appears to me to be the ISH and its brothers-in-size, such as the Lonesome Glory.

And never mind the one ear.  Just say it helps the crown lie flatter on the poll:  less pressure on sensitive nerves...  : )

This piece represents what I could put out between NaMoTackMo and our 2-month (May, June) summer sojourn to Colorado, during which not much could be made.  YES, it is for sale (auction).  I need to choose a method and am open to suggestions. 

                                       BENEFIT AUCTION AT BREYERFEST!!

Due to the generosity of a friend we also have an entire braided bridle and bc set up for auction!!  This will be the Sue Peet set, a curb bridle with 2 pairs of reins and matching breastcollar, made in 2009 for the NAN Auction.  Here are some pix from the deep files:

Romal reins and matching breastcollar are part of this magnificent example of miniature braidwork:

This set, which was made in my heyday!! and represents some of my best work, will be at auction in person at BreyerFest.  Find me with my clipboard and enter a bid!  Room 610.  About this one there's no question: it's to benefit Sue Peet.  This one-time performance shower and tack collector is struggling with major medical issues.  Ninety percent of the sale price goes to her.

We have been making model horse tack since 1979 with the goal of striking the perfect balance between detailed authenticity and durable working playability.  There is a happy medium!

Left to right:  King's Herd's Hackamore c. 1984,   KH2J  2018,   KH2B  2018.

I hope to have more pieces for sale later in the year.  I still have hopes of working on my braid book, with attendant pieces; I also want to re-create the bosal hack & hobbles set I saw on the trail this summer.  In addition there are a couple of saddles in the pipeline.  Announcements will be here and via FaceBoook under Timaru Star II Model Tack.  See also our own Tack Sales Info page on our website.  Timaru Star II.

Happy Bidding and Thank You!