What are new dressage saddles going for these days?

[poltroon]

@Pehsness

So speaking of saddle fitting - what is the norm?

I’ve never actually had a saddle fitted. I’ve tried a couple of times but ran in to road blocks. One saddlery would only do it if you bought the saddle from them, another took my money but didn’t ship the product I ordered despite many emails back and forth (it was just saddle soap, but it showed their true colour’s as a company).

And any coaches I’ve had over the years were not the kind of people to get regular fittings.

So what does a lower level schooling show type rider do? Annual? Only if there’s a problem?

I know the basics so I know I’m not riding in a disaster. But the basics is where my knowledge stops.

I would say, there isn’t a norm, and what you should do is really going to be a function of who you have available to you in your area.

The most important fitting is the first one. Get a saddle that basically works for your horse, and for that, especially if it’s a hard to fit horse, it may even be worth a fair amount of travel to get it in front of a fitter and a sampling of saddles, or to pay someone to bring inventory and expertise to you.

If you find someone good, follow their advice in a way that makes sense to you and works for your particular logistics. I am really skeptical that anyone can do adjustments remotely without seeing the horse. Sometimes we have to rely on these long distance possibilities and there I think you just do the best you can and listen to the horse. Learn all you can about how to assess the fit so you can be smart on your own, once you have a saddle that works.

It’s lovely if you’re near someone with expertise who can come and look once or twice a year. That’s really not typical.

I’d also say that I know a few people who have tried the custom route and those seem if anything more finicky and troublesome than an off the rack brand that has been adjusted, unfortunately.

If you live in a REALLY remote place, there are some entities that I have heard can work with elaborate tracings and measurements to build custom saddles.

[GraceLikeRain]

Ok

They exist so in your expert opinion, what is the real root cause?

[sheltona01]

I also hold a degree in Mechanical Engineering, and I’ve had the opportunity to observe saddle pressure testing in person. I was quite surprised at how high the pressures tend to be overall. One of the most popular researcher deliberately only display the mean pressure and not the maximum. Knowing that, I can for sure see repeat stress causing issues.

I believe that some brands, even well-known ones, don’t always deliver great quality. I once looked like a rock star in front on an Olympic rider. It turned out the front gussets were sewn on crooked, which was causing the saddle to sit unevenly. Interestingly, 3 or 4 other fitters had examined it before me, including the owner of the company who’s also a fitter and saddler. Once we got that sorted out, the saddle sat straight on the horse. Unfortunately that is not uncommon in that brand.

The other issues is the use of presses. If you don’t take the time, you can easily make a saddle crooked. I have seen that happened too.

[poltroon]

There’s just no reason a tree that has been correctly designed and manufactured should deform under normal use. I’ve never had the metal on a stirrup leather deform, for example. A tree has more metal than that.

If the hypothesis is that the tree on some makes has never been engineered to meet reasonable design loads, I could find that believable, but then buying a new saddle doesn’t really solve the problem.

Any time a horse bucks or spooks you’re probably going to put more dynamic load on the stirrup bars than mounting. It’s fine for helmets to be one-fall-and-out items but not saddles.

To me this is less a caution about used saddles then and more about choosing my brands carefully.

[sheltona01]

I completely agree that choosing the right saddle company is important, and ensuring it fits your horse is crucial too.

There’s less force on the stirrup bars compared to the head plates of a saddle. While I was watching a Pliance (pressure testing) demonstration on saddles, I couldn’t help but notice that the forces were clearly coming up from the horses instead of down from the riders. During the demo, as the rider engaged with the audience and shifted around in the saddle to answer their questions, the pressure map barely showed any changes at that moment. However, when the horse cocked his leg, the map really lit up!

It’s important to consider that we’re discussing repeated stress over many years, not just a year or two. Plus, it’s not only the repeated stress from mounting that creates asymmetrical forces on a saddle. I’ve yet to encounter a horse and rider team that’s completely straight. And let’s not forget, steel isn’t like aluminum; it can’t handle repeated flexing over the years without experiencing some issues.

[outerbanks77]

The saddler I work with just posted this and it seemed relevant to the tree integrity discussion. It doesn’t sound like there was a specific event damaging the saddle, or a specific tree failure point.

Lateral Saddle Flex: What does a bendy saddle look like?

[poltroon]

@sheltona01

And let’s not forget, steel isn’t like aluminum; it can’t handle repeated flexing over the years without experiencing some issues.

I don’t know exactly what you’re thinking here, but this statement as written isn’t true.

Metals in general, all metals, will have an elastic loading strength (where it can take load without damage) and a plastic load strength (where load will permanently deform the shape) as well as a fracture strength (where the material completely fails/breaks). As long as you stay in the elastic range, there is no damage to the shape or the metal from load.

Now, a tree is usually a mix of metal and other materials, and you have fasteners and the like, and metals can be compromised by corrosion.

Aluminium is stronger than steel by mass, and somewhat less vulnerable to corrosion; steel is stronger than aluminum by thickness.

The shape of a tree definitely creates some levers that might make it easy to inadvertently damage, and obviously trees do get broken and damaged. There’s a tradeoff between strength and weight and bulk. But it’s just false that steel can’t hold a shape indefinitely, if it is designed to do so, and protected from corrosion. Fasteners are often a weak point.

[BlueDrifter]

We might have the same thing going on in our barn with Superior… I don’t get how he can fix without the horse…

[SBrentnall]

He can’t, not if the horse is anything other than completely normal. It just makes no sense.

Ironically, the old saddle, which my horse loves, is also a Superior. There’s no doubt about the quality of the saddles, but the fit is totally hit or miss.

[pluvinel]

@outerbanks77

The saddler I work with just posted this and it seemed relevant to the tree integrity discussion. It doesn’t sound like there was a specific event damaging the saddle, or a specific tree failure point.

Interesting that she doesn’t discuss what causes the tree to flex. Was it cracked wood? Metal? Her “flex test” is what I use to check a saddle.

[outerbanks77]

I did ask her on Facebook and she said it didn’t have a specific failure point, but was just plain worn out with flex coming from multiple weak points. Standard wood tree, I believe.