Building the Charro Wade

by R.J.Sagely

Sometimes when building a custom order for a patron of Sage Saddlery I will build another saddle to have on hand for immediate sale if someone takes a shine to it. I have had a saddle design in mind for a good while now and decided to see if I could bring it to reality. I special ordered this tree (well, the horn anyhow) and will provide ongoing and updated pages to chronicle the building of this rig. This tree came out just like I had in my mind so I will be building it for my personal use. When it is done I will have a used Wade for sale (my current rig) at a good price. It will be a well broke in saddle with some fairly deep dally grooves in the mulehide... Hope you enjoy this story of a saddle being built. If you like what you see when I get done with it you can try and buy it out from under me or just have me make one custom to your taste.

The groundseat or groundwork -

This is the tree from Timberline Saddle Trees in Utah. It is a Wade setup with a custom horn: 16 1/2" unfinished seat; 6 1/2" by 8" gullet with 93 degree full quarter bars; 9" slick for swell; arizona stirrup slot; 4" by 13" cantle with 1 1/2" dish. Now for the unfinished horn dimensions: Cap = 5 1/2"; Throat = 3 1/4" at narrowest; Height at back = 1 1/2"; Height at Tip = 3" (about a 15 degree tilt).

	The gullet cover, shown below, is the first piece of leather I put on the tree. More than half of it is covered up so unless the customer is after something special there is generally no tooling of the piece. You'd never see anything tooled on the underside anyhow so this is just plain.
	I use an all leather groundseat unless the customer specifically wants a "tin" (actually galvanized sheet metal) strainer. I prefer the leather, just a personal preference I suppose. This is the first layer of leather and it is laid in hair side down so that the smooth side is out. Keeps the leather from so readily soaking up sweat from the blanket. I stamp my cartouche there too, so future generations that ride my rigs will know who made it. You can see the plug for the hand hole that I use to line up the seat pieces (four altogether). Some folks cut the hole kind of free hand, following the contour of the strainer or making one up of there own.  I like this bigger hole to allow a little more venting up the channel between the bars. You can also see the finish leather that is sewn to this first piece. It will be pulled up through the hand hole to cover the rough edges and provide a finished look to the hand hole when all the layers are in place.
This shows the bottom of the first layer before the finish piece has been sewn on. Right then the piece was just drying to shape.
These shots show the third layer of the groundseat. There is a small piece under this that helps to build up the rise at the front and only comes back to about the middle of the seat. It is already covered up. You can see the plug is disappearing as the layers build up. I know some folks say this seat causes you to be further away from the horse than a tin seat but I don't think the difference is that much as the tin seat has a couple layers of leather laid over it so as to be able to put a good finish to the groundwork of the saddle. The cantle dish is aout 1 1/2" on this seat and is slowly filling up with leather too. the dish will finish at a little less than an inch.
	This is the fourth layer of leather in the groundwork of the seat. The plug has disappeared from view and the seat has been skived and then additionally smoothed with carpenter's cabinet shaves. This piece has to be right as the finish seat goes on this and any imperfections of this final layer will be discomfort spots when you ride.
The last few pics show some of the shaping done to the fourth layer of the groundseat and also the finish leather was sewn to the first layer and is now brought up from the underneath and glued down to the fourth layer. The piece is smoothed with a stick and provides a nice look. covering the edges of the four layers that would be showing in the hand hole cut.

Covering the Swell, Blocking Skirts and Building the Rigging