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Al Stohlman saddle in miniature

My latest saddle pattern is a reproduction from the Al Stohlman volumes of saddle making. I think I may have chosen the most complicated one. But I really love the flat plate which is incorporated into the saddle, one of my more successful 3D printing efforts. Rather a shame then, after all that work, its covered by a fender!

Even though I was struggling with leather which wasn’t quite right, it was plenty good enough for a test saddle, just working through how everything went together without any pressure to get the quality spot on. So I was happy to persevere and learn a bit more. Making something with many different pieces is an odd process, even more so with this new pattern. Many times I thought it’s never going to come together, literally! Nothing seemed to fit, the leather pieces seemed too small, I thought I might have to botch a few things and adjust the patterns for the next, proper saddle. But in the end the leather seems to stretch and change shape over time, conforming to the saddle tree and the shape of the horse, coming together actually really well. This way of working has happened each time I’ve made one of these, to some degree or other, but having all these ups and downs keeps it interesting.

Find more photos of the construction on my Flickr site

3D printing

So I’ve started experimenting with ways to produce bits for bridles and other hardware. It’s opened up a whole new world of 3D modelling and printing, and its not as hard as you would think, although results are coming out a bit mixed.

For these first prototypes I used some of my design software, Adobe Illustrator, to produce the outlines of the bits I wanted – there are other cheap/free vector packages out there. Then I used TinkerCad to make them into 3D models and sent them off to be printed. Yep! It was that easy and pretty inexpensive, under £15 a set. The first prototypes were slightly too large for me, despite checking with paper templates first. The second set were smaller but pushing the boundaries of how small you can go on some of the styles. And I quickly found out that a lot of finishing would be required. We are in the realms of acetone baths (didn’t really work for me!), lots of fine sanding and lots of chrome spray layers to get them looking halfway decent. SO… something I am still working on. I have lots of pieces to continue the experiments, but I’m also looking into other processes.

There are many different styles of bits out there for bridles, in the real world. Quite a few of these have been reproduced for the classic and traditional scales, not so many for one sixth scale. Rio Rondo carry a few bits for us, and their other lovely tack items can work across the sizes, which is great. However, its a bit of a pain to get things posted across here to Blighty! A rather long drawn out and expensive business – and lets not even talk about the infamous Royal Mail ‘handling charges’…

Only a designer…

… can get excited about business cards!

But Moo do such a lovely job, different images on the back of each card and their packaging is up there with Apple’s. I splashed out on their Luxe range with an orange centre, so forgive me, I am very excited!

one-sixth-saddles-business-cards