Sunday, November 15, 2009

Too many irons in the fire!

Friday I stripped my horse trailer so that John could use it to haul some furniture. The mats are out waiting to be scrubbed. The boards are bare and ready to be scrubbed as well. I think I will also paint them, or at least the part that is under the horses' hineys. I wish I could scrub and paint the whole trailer, but that will have to wait for another year.

As you can see in the picture below, I also need to paint the walls in my bedroom. I painted test patches and never got around to actually painting the room. That color is too dark so I still need to come up with a good color. Blech. I hate painting.

When I emptied the trailer I brought my saddle in to get ready to clean and treat it. This is the one I bought this summer, the one that I searched for years to find, the one that fits my horse. Unfortunately it has some tooling on it, some of it is rather deep. (I admit it's kinda pretty and you don't see work like this often, but tooling is a pain.)

So my question for you is this: how do you put a waterproofing treatment, such as Obenauf's LP on the tooling without leaving white residue? Or can it not be done?

I was thinking I'd heat it up first, use a hair dryer to keep it liquid, work it into the cracks with a toothbrush and then remove the excess first with a bit of towel and then with Qtips. I don't know if that will work?

Here's my saddle all clean and ready for the next step. I'll have to get it done soon because I don't want to ride again and get it dirty and have to clean it again.

Looking at the saddle reminds me, I have another question for you. Have any of you ever tried a sheepskin seat cover? This saddle is very uncomfortable for me. I don't want an ugly tush cushion. But I don't know if I want to invest in expensive sheepskin if it isn't going to help. I also wonder if the underside will rub my saddle in bad ways.

Tomorrow and possibly Tuesday I'll be helping John move store furniture and I'll be helping out on my friend's farm all week. I have a fencing project I have to get done, but happily I got most of that done today. Just have to reconnect some things and plug the charger in. Need to set up water and trough heaters and rearrange horses. Scoop poop and all that everyday stuff. Then there will be the barn to deal with. That's going to take months to clean up. Life sure isn't dull around here. Don't have to look far to find something to do. One of these days I'll actually ride my horse.

2 comments:

AKPonyGirl said...

Nice saddle!I ride in a slick seat saddle also - a 1955 Hamley. When I took it to my saddlemaker to restore it, I asked about putting a padded seat on the saddle. Clay picked himself off the floor and then told me, in no uncertain terms, there was no way he would disfigure such a classic saddle. I started riding in chaps and it made a difference.

In my opinion, a sheepskin cover would not be as good as a gel pad. Some endurance/CTR riders I know use them. They aren't too noticeable (since you are sitting on them) and the good ones have fabric that doesn't scratch your saddle.

My saddle is completely plain so I have no idea how to clean/condition tooling.

Linda said...

Wow--that turned out nice. I have a lot of tooling on my saddle and I love it, but it is a pain to clean. I use a toothbrush to get into the nooks and crannies.

I liked the demolition video below! Cool.