We have a booth at the George Strait team roping this weekend and look forward to seeing our customers. Come by the booth and see some of our latest work.
There will not only be saddles in our booth, but also in the arena. Watch some of the best roping and see what the best ropers are riding.
Saddles generally get abused and thrown back in the saddle house or trailer till their next use. Many times and for most folks they get oiled little and washed even less. Dirt is a big problem for leather because it draws the oils out and dries the leather if left for extended periods of time. This leads to dryrott and damage that can lead to expensive repairs.
I recommend washing saddles and leather goods with a mild soap like Ivory dish soap or Murphy’s Oil Soap. Scrubbing this in with a soft brush and rinsing with warm water will get the dirt up and away from the leather. Once completely rinsed, set outside and allow to dry fully before conditioning leather with oil or leather conditioner. Not allowing the leather to dry fully can lead to mold growth.
It helps to take the saddle apart as far as you feel comfortable, this will allow you to get to the places that are hard to reach. A lot of saddle repairs are needed for the small, but important, parts that are underneath the main pieces of the saddle(rigging, connectors, stirrup leathers, etc).
Keep your saddle clean and maintained and you can save a lot of money on repairs. If all this sounds like too much work or just not your thing we would be happy to do this for you. We offer a complete Clean, Oil, and Polish in our shop as do many other saddle shops. I recommend this once a year with proper quaterly maintenance depending on use.
This is the first post for our new blog here at DG Saddlery. Our plan with this is too post answers to common questions like saddle fitting, padding, leather care and much more. We also hope to use this to keep our great customers notified of things happening at the shop and places we are going.
Please feel free to log in and comment on any of our posting so that we are sure to fully answer any questions that you may have as we move along. We really enjoy hearing from our customers and helping them with issues that come up in the world of horses.
Our hopes are that this will become the main place where everyone can come to better educate themselves about saddles, saddle making, or anything western. Hopefully it will also be fun and interesting.
Be sure to visit our website DGSaddlery to view some of our work or to email us with questions or concerns.
We are really looking forward to this and hope you are as well.
