I’ve been gone for a bit…
Oxbow stirrups are designed to ride with your foot all the way through, the ‘english’ description would be having the foot ‘home’ in the stirrup, with the heel of your boot against the ‘tread’ of the stirrup. A western oxbow does not have a tread, though, it is round on the bottom.
Here’s a pic, the lady on the palomino down the page a bit has oxbow stirrups, and she is riding them the way they are intended:
http://www.buckaroocountry.com/
If oxbows are working for you, no reason to change them.
But…
The Dorrance brothers, Ray Hunt, Buck Brannaman, etc prefer a stirrup with a wide tread, like these:
http://www.ranchworldads.com/classified.php?listing=20747
Because they give you a stable platform for a good base of support. An oxbow stirrup supports your leg from farther toward the heel, and is usually ridden with your feet braced against the oxbow, making some leg movements not really work well. The flat platform puts you on the balls of your feet.
Sore knees from riding in a Western saddle are very common; if the fenders won’t twist sideways easily you inadvertently put pressure on your knees to keep your stirrups from twisting back to flat against the horse.
Also, a normal western stirrup will not hang with a level foot platform unless the stirrup leather has been adjusted and reset specifically to hang the stirrup level.
Otherwise, to get stirrups that hang level, you buy offset stirrups:
http://www.chicksaddlery.com/page/CDS/PROD/1087/EA4571?utm_source=shopzilla&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopzilla%2Bdata%2Bfeed
Oxbow stirrups get around both of the above problems.
Back to defending my original opinion and statement about ‘fake wades’…
Wider bars with more rock…in reference to what? Those are improvements Tom Dorrance made to the saddle he was riding, but both of those changes may be inappropriate for certain horses. Mules, in particular, often need little rock in the bars.
I don’t mean ‘wide bars’ as in, fits a wide horse.
A western tree is made of two bars, and two arches to connect them- fork arch in front, cantle arch in the rear.
If we oversimplify and pretend we can make the bars out of a couple of two-by-fours, or a couple of two-by-sixes, I am meaning ‘wider bars’ as in, we make the bars from a two-by-six.
If you build a big swell, your front arch has a lot of stability for roping and a saddle horn, so you could use (with poetic license here) a two-by-four for your bars. But building that big swell on narrow bars, creates more leverage on the tree and therefore the horse’s withers if you rope something heavy.
If you have a Wade fork, you have to get the horn low over the withers, and support a thick horn, so you will have to use a WIDER two-by-six for the bars to stabilize that big horn. That lower leverage, is one part of my definition of a ‘real’ Wade tree.
That wider bar also tends to make a Wade saddle fit a bigger variety of horses. I can’t really explain this one, but I do know it from experience…a real Wade tree will fit more horses without soring them, than a similar angle-dimension tree with a swell fork.
To fit a mule, you are going to have to make mule shaped bars. But you will still need a wider bar to support a low, post horn.
Those characteristics alone don’t determine a Wade. After all, Tom’s old Wade looks much different:
https://www.google.ca/search?q=tom+d...d2k6AfmxSQM%3A
…from Buck’s modern Wade:
https://www.google.ca/search?q=buck+...nK3a84t89IM%3A
The saddles look similar enough to me…Mr. Frecker photographs his saddles with their stirrups brought forward, to show that the fenders can swing forward. But both saddles have a low set, large diameter horn (that is easy to stack dallies on) and stirrups that are hung underneath the rider, to ride with your legs in what is more known today as a dressage position. Exactly where the stirrups are set on a saddle will depend on the individual rider- how big your butt is, how long your legs are, etc. I can ride in Mr. Fillabeana’s Wade and get put right into a chair seat- but Mr. Fillabeana is quite a lot taller than I am, and has a bigger behind. So I would expect Tom Dorrance’s saddle to look different than Buck Brannaman’s. Buck is a big guy! But when you see them ride, sometimes in Tom or Ray Hunt’s case in old photos or videos, they have a big similarity in leg position.
However, a large diameter, low wood horn is not uncommon in charro saddles. Is a Wade a Wade if the horn is round, or is a Guadalahara horn shape allowed?
I’m going to distinguish between the Guadalajara shape (which is roundish, with a pointed ‘nose’:
http://www.wssaddles.com/gallery.html
(The ‘Monte’ saddle has a Guadalajara shaped horn)
…from a Charro horn, which has a large diameter, ‘Guadalajara’ shaped, steeply pitched horn cap but a narrowed neck:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.narrawin.com/images/gear-collect_mexican1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.narrawin.com/gearcollect.html&h=393&w=500&sz=86&tbnid=dQz_yGrQ5YcEkM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=115&zoom=1&usg=__lpoXr_CLXE207qN3AbvHy5jOfKk=&docid=oP0zQREcgn8B3M&sa=X&ei=vFqRUd_zCoK9qgH75ICQBw&ved=0CE0Q9QEwCA&dur=1295
A Wade horn is designed to be able to stack dallies easily, and to have a lot of surface area so that slipping rope is also facilitated. The charro horns have a large diameter on top, but have a more narrow neck- there’s only comfortable room for a couple of dallies there. The horn wouldn’t have to be perfectly round, but the Guadalajara shape would stack dallies and slip rope just fine. But the charro horns with narrow necks would react to a rope differently, so to me a ‘real’ wade wouldn’t have a charro horn.
So, to sum up, my definition of a real Wade tree, is one with a slick fork, a large diameter horn, wide bars, and stirrups set underneath the rider.
Personally, I still think Rod is right.
It’s nice to have a thinking conversation with someone, aktill. Thank you!
