A horse collar

A request from a lady. Sedgwick australian nut leather with dark havana loops, solid brass conway buckle.

Lady's brown stirrup leathers

As said in title: "lady"'s size, Sedgwick stirrup leather, stainless steel buckles stitched in place with 1 mm polypropilene braided thread.

A peculiar leather work

A really custom bridle, made in australian nut Sedgwick leather, for an american girl.

even 

It features same color paddings on crownpiece and on sliding loop.

More or less full size, even if cut on measures provided by the girl. Anyway, water loops could provide some adjustment as they have 6 regulation holes on each side.

Another kind of regulation is made through the sliding loop: lifting or lower it will change bridle wearability.

Braided leash

A leash made with australian nut Sedgwick leather, with a solid brass trigger hook, 1 m total length. The trigger hook is held in position by the braid.

A bridle with braided browband

Here's my guy posing with a simple black bridle without noseband, with white and purple rope, braided browband, and stainless steel buckles. Size full.

Here's the upper part of this bridle:

It will be used along with these gallop reins: bit billets will be same size as reins, 22 mm or 7/8". Throatlatch and browband are slightly wider too to join better with wide billets.

A detail of buckle's part:

Western style bridle-halter

Made in dark havana leather with stainless steel hardware, size full. Conchos come from an US reseller of Tandy Leather Factory.
3/4" cheek piece, 5/8" throatlatch, 3/4" bit billets with conway buckles.

A detail of how noseband and browband looked after a first phase:

I modified them since then: conchos fixing screws sticked out, so I decided to stitch a second thinner leather layer on the back of these decorated parts.

Before the operation:

After the operation:

I wanted to keep screws accessible: they're blocked with threading glue, but with time and use you never know what can happen. Here's the finished browband:

Single plain rein, 1" wide

I break the silence with some pics of my last creation, made last saturday.

A single dark havana rein 1" wide, to match with the bridle-halter I'm doing in these days. Total length is 3.5 m, stainless steel snaps.

A detail, where the 2 strips join together:

Adjustable dog harness

H-shaped harness for medium-large size dog, made in black leather with solid brass buckles on shoulders and chest.

Pretty close to this one.. only difference, in two years I got a little better when it comes to finishing and stitching.

How to remove water stains from leather

Last week a girl at the barn asked me how to remove water stains from her saddle.
After some search on my sources this is what I've found. I still haven't tested any of these: try on small hidden portions of leather, let dry and check the result before applying on the whole surface.

1 - more Water!

Wet evenly the whole surface, let it dry away from sun or other heat sources, then recondition with glycerine soap.

2 - Alchool / Acetone

Friction the stain, let it dry and recondition.

3 - Oxalic acid

A product used for polishing marble, in wood treatment and beekeeping. Be careful, it's pretty toxic... but it's known to work well for this purpose.  Dissolve 1-2 table spoon in 1 liter of water, wet evenly the saddle and let it dry. It will slightly lighten leather color but will not damage it.

Bridle-halter

Or halter-bridle, or haldle, or brilter... or my way to celebrate my return home from holidays, entirely made last week when environmental temp never went below 33 °C in my workshop...
Made for a cob-full sized horse but here's with Ginseng a, a nice cob with thin light head.
Black leather, stainless steel fittings, padded noseband and browband.

I had to find a compromise between toughness and lightness for both uses, as a halter and as a bridle: reins, cheeks, bit billets and noseband are 3/4" wide, throatlatch and browband are 5/8".

Both reins and bit billets have scissors snaps. I haven't shot pics of the reins, but are made in leather with rubber hand grips, with the center buckle matching with the bridle ones.

Custom reins, western style

I finished this nice pair the day before yesterday. 100% black leather, no more than 4" of linen thread on each one, for blocking braiding in place. 1/2" wide, approx 2.10 m long.

Waterloops:

Hand end and its thick braiding, 12" long:

Dog leather lunge line

A very practical and simple item: a 1/2" wide australian nut leather strip cut as long as Sedgwick back is, 2.4 m in this case

No creasing on edges, which are kept almost raw cut: lightly burnished, colored and sealed, in order to keep price low.

Another basic leash...

Dark havana version of this one. 3/4" wide, 1 m long, solid brass trigger hook snap.

Bitless bridle - 3

A more simple version of the bitless bridle: noseband cheekpieces are directly stitched to noseband.

Padded browband and noseband, black leather with same color paddings, stainless steel fittings, cob size.

Racing reins

Reins made for an american girl into racing.
Some specs: 7/8" wide, 58" long, buckle bit billets, 24" Equus rubber grips and black Sedgwick leather.

As their final use, I moved rubber toward bit billets more than usual equestrian reins. For the same reason they're also wider than common reins.

Rescue plan for an expensive breastplate

What you can do when you buy a Passier's Auriga breastplate but find out it's too small for your horse?


Simple! You can contact me and ask for 2 straps like these one.


Nothing esoteric, 4 loos and a buckle... but always better than baling twine!

Basic leash - 2

Similar to the first one, but tougher: this is made from a 3/4" strip. Same leather, same length (1 m), same finish and ultra-strong stainless steel trigger hook snap. Made for a male dobermann, previous one was for a female dobie (same owner).

Rope bosal

Several months ago I took on to make a bosal made of rope... finally last week I found the opportunity. Main rope is 1 cm thick, other colored one is the same I use for rope browbands.

Black padded bridle

Spring is in the air and I spend too much time indoor... but at least results are nice!

A simple but effective bridle, made in black leather with padded browband and noseband. Custom-cut, it's a small full, or large cob... buckle billets, usual stainless steel buckles. Matching reins have Equus rubber grips.

A detail shot from right...

... and one from left...

Many thanks to Elena and Nick :)

Rolled leather

A few shot I took during the making of this tubular rein.

The strip is only creased, to provide a stitching line on both sides. Due to the nature of this work, burnishing and coloring would be useless at this point. Here's the stitching phase:

I soaked leather into the water before stitching. Small core cord is not glued.

After the stitching, I proceed with usual finish, starting with beveling.

But before that I used sand paper on the edge, for making both sides even.

At this point I soaked again leather in water for a few seconds, applied a layer of saddle soap and passed through the rein-rounder.

After the rounding phase, edge is almost done: alcool dye and acrylic finish and le voilà!

Tubular leather rein

My latest effort (a real one this time):

It's a single rein made in dark havana leather, with hook billets. I used thin linen thread for billets and strong poly braid for the tubular part.

Tech specs: 3.5 m total length, tubular part is 1 cm thick and it's 3.25 m long, billets are regular 5/8" wide ones. It took nearly 20 meters of thread to get the tubular stitching done.


Soon I'll publish some "making of" pics too...