Mark Howes, Saddlemaker

Marty & Jodie -- you still need to meet them -- were driving up to Fort Collins to get Marty fitted for his saddle and invited me along.  Now, you can buy just about any ole saddle from any ole tack shop or internet site, but Mark Howes of Double H Ranch Saddle Shop makes this saddle to fit you AND your horse.  It was really cool to see how it was done and I thought maybe you would be interested in seeing it.

When we showed up, Mark was in the process of tooling (making the pretty designs) a saddle he was making for a rancher in Hawaii.

  

As you can see, it's almost like he's using a hammer and a chisel, but his "chisel" is a different shape for each type of depression he's trying to make.

For instance, if you look below, you'll see straight lines, which make up the main outline.  Then using a pear-shaped tool, he created the shading in the petals of the flower.  And a separate tool yet to create the veins of the flower. 

 

He can create pretty much anything you want if you give him the idea.  As I mentioned, this one is for a rancher in Hawaii, so this is a Hibiscus, the state flower of Hawaii.  He had another saddle in his shop that had columbines on it, which is the state flower of Colorado, but unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of it.  

Here's an idea of what that saddle will look like when it's finished.  

Then it was Marty's turn.  Since he is local, he can just go up to Mark's shop and get fitted.  Apparently, and this was before my time, Mark came down to Marty's place to look at Marty's horse and to see how Marty rides, so that he could fit the saddle to the horse and perhaps correct any flaws in Marty's riding.  While observing, Mark noticed that Marty leans a little bit forward so built up the front of the saddle to help prevent this.  

Here you see Marty sitting on his tree, which is the base of the saddle before all the leather and padding gets added.  The point of getting fitted is to see if there are any pressure points.  Marty said he felt like the left side was higher or pushing into his seat bone more, so Mark fixed this.

If you look closely at the picture, you'll see how fast his hands were moving and the leather shavings as he wore the area down.  This went on several times until Marty felt it was a pretty comfortable seat.  Mark said he had a good idea of what needed to be done now and we were finished!

I added this last photo just because I thought it was funny.  Notice the tree in the top right corner?  It kind of looks like it's smiling down on us, doesn't it? :)

If you're interested in more of what Mark does, visit his website at www.dhrss.com.