One rainy day during elk season, TJ and I were driving on the creek road above our house. We rounded a curve not far up the road and found ourselves in a front row seat with two bighorn rams fighting. They were no more than twenty feet off the road. Fatigued from hours of struggle, […]

The two young school girls persisted in drawing the horse’s ears like an upside down W. They were then shown how to look at the picture they were trying to draw rather than looking inside their own mind at how they thought those ears should be. “See the angles of the horse’s ears?” I encouraged. After […]

This browband headstall was made for a dear friend and customer. I just love doing this kind of work…it is challenging and rewarding at the same time. It is entirely hand sewn with waxed linen at eight stitches per inch. I finished the edges with a hot beeswax technique that has become a standard for […]

It’s not often you make a saddle like this one for a ranch manager to use, but as a saddlemaker, this is as good as it gets. This saddle is at the height of what I do in my vocation: Artistic expression blended with the best functional aspects I can muster as well. There is […]

I spent a bit of time in France in 2009 learning from a professional leatherworker/saddlemaker in Saumur. Jean Luc Parisot is a great craftsman and a generous friend who works for the French military furnishing a variety of leather goods for their horse program. He does work for the world famous Cadre Noir in Saumur […]

The challenge for making a back cinch that will not tend to separate over time and hard use is to figure out how to lay down some stitching in the center of the cinch. Here I have done that while weaving it into the floral decoration. I borrowed this idea from the wriggle lines that […]

19 October 2012 We rode, Dad and I to the top of the world today. We were looking for elk, perhaps a wolf, and maybe a little peace of mind. We made our way through timbered draws, sagebrush slopes and rock ridges. It is familiar country for it is summer range for the cattle Dad […]

This is a notebook cover that sold at this year’s ‘Cowboy Crossings’ exhibit at the National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City. The decoration on the cover is a design that shows a ram’s horns entangled in vinework, but the ram is dead and what has issued from its skull is new life. Easter lilies are […]

On my top grades of floral carving, I include things like a carved cantle binding. This one also has a rolled edge at the stitch line as well. A very clean job on a rolled edge will be something that most folks won’t be able to identify, yet it is one of the things that […]