I was looking at saddles and an idea popped into my head, can you build a new saddle on an old tree (assuming it’s still in good condition)? I don’t plan on building one myself, I was just curious and I thought I could get some opinions from here. 
I had it done by an Amish saddle maker with a western saddle. I picked up an old saddle cheap and the tree fit my TB, but the leather was shot. He stripped off all the old leather and built a beautiful new saddle on the tree. This was a solid, old, rawhide covered tree designed to last forever. It would probably be harder on the modern plastic and fiberglass trees.
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I’m sure it could be done, but probably not cost effectively.
In my exhaustive search for a hard to fit horse, I saw a website for custom western saddles where the saddlemaker
mentioned he would build a custom on ‘your’ tree. Yes, I can believe you could use the old tree if it’s one of the ‘good old’ wooden, quality built ones. The modern trees are like ‘plastic’ compared to the old ones.
Depends on the tree.
I have a offside champion & wilton that is rare enough to rebiuld.
A well fitting wood western tree is rebuildable. The composit trees become brittle after 20 years or so.
English tree depends on how hard your horse is to fit.
I have a dressage saddle that the maker will put a new tree in; however, the cost is over $2000, so not cheap at least in my budget but cheaper then buying the same saddle new.
