Thursday, February 26, 2009

Buckaroo Leather Company a Proud Sponsor!

Buckaroo Leather Company would like to congratulate all the 2008 Intermountain Reined Cow Horse Circuit Winners! (Pictured below)

Buckaroo Leather Company is a proud corporate and Championship Award Incentive Fund Sponsor. For the first time Champions in 10 classes were awarded a cash prize, an incentive check targeted to exceed $225 each. This check will compensate the winner for their travel expenses. The incentive check will be in addition to their outstanding Circuit awards.

Buckaroo Leather is proud to be able to manufacture the custom award trophies as well. The custom made horse tack awards are quality leather hand crafted Headstalls. (pictured above)
The Buckaroo Leather Family is honored to be a continuing major sponsor of this fine organization and looks forward to 2009 and the future!

For more information on the Intermountain Reined Cow Horse Circuit (IMRCH) please click here for their website.


And if you are interested in having Buckaroo Leather be a sponsor for your organization or manufacture custom award trophies for your event please feel free to call John Brand, the owner at 530-545-0139 or email buckaroojohn@sbcglobal.net


Our family has been dedicated for 30 years in serving
the Western Horseman the safest most durable Quality
American made leather horse tack.......

Buckaroo John Brand

Buckaroo Leather, The Brand to Demand
Visit Our Unique Store Today
Buckaroo Leather Shopping Site

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Saddles, the Evolution

The saddle is the cowboy's/cowgirl's greatest asset. Like a comfy pair of jeans or sneakers, the saddle has been "broken in" to fit not only the rider but the horse. Even in the early west, most cowboys considered their rig their most important possession and by taking excellent care of a well made saddle it could last up to 20 years or more. Over time the saddle was broken in to the riders shape, becoming more comfortable and achieving the "rocking chair fit"....which made it even more valuable considering the hours and days upon end spent sitting on it. This may not have been the case in the early period of the saddle's history, where the saddle was considered more of a tool than an asset.

In 700-800 BCE there is verifiable evidence that the first predecessor to the modern saddle was in use, developed by the Assyrians. It consisted of a simple cloth fastened onto the horse with a surcingle. The Scythians also developed a saddle which included padding and decorative embellishments. These early saddles had neither a solid tree nor stirrups, and provided protection and comfort to the rider, with a slight increase in security.The Sarmatians also used saddles by about 300 BC. They added the breastplate and a girth to help keep the saddle on.

The development of the solid saddle tree was significant; it raised the rider above the horse's back, and distributed the rider's weight on either side of the animal's spine instead of pinpointing pressure at the rider's seat bones, reducing the pounds per square inch carried on any one part of the horse's back, thus greatly increasing the comfort of the horse and prolonging its useful life. The invention of the solid saddle tree also allowed development of the true stirrup as it is known today. Without a solid tree, the rider's weight in the stirrups creates abnormal pressure points and makes the horse's back sore.

One of the earliest solid-treed saddles in the west was the "four horn" design, first used by the Romans as early as the first century BC. This design also did not have stirrups.

The stirrup was one of the milestones in saddle development. The first stirrup-like object was invented in India in the second century BC, and consisted of a simple leather strap in which the rider's toe was placed. It offered very little support, however. The nomadic tribes in northern China are thought to have been the inventors of the modern stirrup. The stirrup appeared to be in widespread use across China by 477 AD. The stirrup then spread to Europe. This invention gave great support for the rider, and was essential in later warfare.


In the Middle Ages the saddle was improved upon due to the fact that the knights needed a saddle that could help hold them in the saddle and support the weight of their heavy armor and weapons. This resulted in a saddle that was built on a wooden tree with both a higher pommel and cantle. This enabled the knight to wear a full suit of armor on his war horse, carry heavy weaponry and it was much harder to knock him off during battle due to the higher pommel and cantle. This saddle was originally padded with wool or horsehair and covered in leather or fabric. If a knight was of rank and had wealth often embellishments would be added to a special saddle which included elaborate leatherwork, precious metals, jewels, fabrics and embroidery.

The American stock saddle evolved from the from the early Spanish war saddle used by the conquistadors. The Mexican vaquero's adapted the original saddle which had a heavy rigid tree, high fork and cantle, deep-dished seat and short stirrups. They made a few minor modifications and added a leather skirt. In the late 1700's the Mexican "California" saddle came about and it had a fixed skirt which was round and without jockeys along with a more substantial rigging which consisted of a cinch ring that hung down in line with the front fork and a horizontal strap that ran from the cinch to the back of the tree to secure the saddle. The strong high-peaked pommels of this saddle were ideal for taking a turn around a rope for holding an animal. The Texans then altered the design even more. They liked the basic overall design keeping the wooden tree, horn, cantle and stamped leather but they modified the wooden horn so it was short, thick and covered in leather. The skirt was changed to a plain square skirt and the stirrups were made out of wide steam bent pieces of wood which were much stronger than the carved ones previously used. A second cinch was also added to firmly anchor the saddle as dealing with longhorn cattle were much different than dealing with domesticated ones. In the 1870's they changed the horn again to a short metal one as the wooden ones often broke when dealing with a wild cow.

During this time saddle makers were spread throughout the west and were quite busy making and repairing saddles. Many new designs and innovations came about with the input that they received from their clientele, the ranchers and cowboys. With people moving into the west from the east there were many different styles of saddles seen. Georgia and the Carolinas had "Plantation-style", the "Morgan" came from the east. The "Hope" saddle was used by mountain men, pioneers and early cowboys. The "Cheyenne" saddle was distinguished by it's fancy rolled cantle.

Today, the needs of the working cowboy are no longer the only focus of western saddle design. Saddles are now designed for a wide variety of uses and riders - trail/pleasure, endurance, rodeo contestant, team roper, barrel racer, reiner, cutter, and, of course, working cowboy.Buckaroo Leather offers quality leather horse tack for your saddles . We have horse tack for all your needs, pleasure, trail riding, rodeo and much more.

Our family has been dedicated for 30 years in serving
the Western Horseman the safest most durable Quality
American made leather horse tack.......

Buckaroo John Brand

Buckaroo Leather, The Brand to Demand
Visit Our Unique Store Today
Buckaroo Leather Shopping Site

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Congratulations to all American Trail Trial Winners!


The Buckaroo Family would like to Congratulate all the winners of the 2008 American Trail Trial competitions.

Buckaroo Leather is proud to be a sponsor of this exciting new family oriented horse back riding sport.

We are proud suppliers of their custom award breast collars (pictured in the photos)

For information on this new sport please click on the link below.

American Trail Trials Association

Our family has been dedicated for 30 years in serving
the Western Horseman the safest most durable Quality
American made leather horse tack.......

Buckaroo John Brand

Buckaroo Leather, The Brand to Demand
Visit Our Unique Store Today
Buckaroo Leather Shopping Site

Roy Rogers - Vaquero

This is Great Cowboy Lore...........

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The History of Leather


The use of animal hides for clothing and basic survival items can be traced back as far as Early Man in the Paleolithic period. Cave paintings discovered in caves near Lerida in Spain depict the use of leather clothing. Man hunted wild animals for food but removed their hides and skins from the dead carcass and used them as crude tents, clothing and footwear.


Early man realized that the skins rapidly putrefied and thus became useless. They need a way to preserve the hides. The earliest method was to stretch the hides and skins on the ground to dry, rubbing them with fats and animals brains while they dried. This had a limited preserving and softening action. Primitive man discovered also that the smoke of wood fires could preserve hides and skins, as did treating them with an infusion of tannin-containing barks, leaves, twigs and fruits of certain trees and plants. It seems likely that man first discovered how to make leather when he found that animal skins left lying on a wet forest floor became tanned naturally by chemicals released by decaying leaves and vegetation.


Much later the use of earth salts containing alum as a tanning agent to produce soft white leather was discovered. The alum leathers could be dyed with naturally occurring dyestuffs in various plants.


In Egyptian times leather was used for sandals, clothes, gloves, buckets, bottles, shrouds for burying the dead and for military equipment. In Egyptian tombs, wall paintings and artifacts depicted these uses of leather.


The Romans also used leather on a wide scale for footwear, clothes, and military equipment including shields, saddles and harnesses. Excavation of Roman sites in Great Britain has yielded large quantities of leather articles such as footwear and clothing.The manufacture of leather was introduced to Britain by the Roman invaders and by religious communities, whose monks were expert at making leather, especially vellum and parchment for writing purposes.


The ancient Britons had many uses for leather from footwear, clothing and leather bags, to articles of warfare. The hulls of the early boats, known as coracles, were also covered in leather.Through the centuries leather manufacture expanded steadily and by medieval times most towns and villages had a tannery, situated on the local stream or river, which they used as a source of water for processing and as a source of power for their water wheel driven machines. Many of these tanneries still exist, but in many towns the only remaining evidence is in street names, like Tanner Street, Bark Street and Leather Lane.


The earliest crude leathers were made by first immersing the raw hides and skins in a fermenting solution of organic matter in which bacteria grew and attacked the hides or skins, resulting in a loosening of the hair or wool and some dissolving out of skin protein. The hair or wool was then scraped off with primitive blunt stone or wooden scrapers and fat or meat still adhering to the flesh side was removed in a similar manner.


Tanning, the conversion of pelt into leather, was done by dusting the raw stock with ground up bark other organic matter and placing them in shallow pits or vats of tannin solution.Further additions of ground bark, were made from time to time until the tannin solution had penetrated right through the skin structure, taking up to two years for very thick hides. The leather was then hung up for several days in open sheds. The dressing of the leather involved paring or shaving it to a level thickness, coloring, treatment with oils and greases, drying and final treatment of the grain surface with waxes, proteins such as blood and egg albumins, and shellac to produce attractive surface finishes.


During the Middle Ages leather was used for all kinds of purposes such as: footwear, clothes, leather bags, cases and trunks, leather bottles, saddlery and harness, for the upholstery of chairs, and couches, book binding and military uses. It was also used to decorate coaches, sedan chairs and walls.The majority of the leather was tanned with oak bark but soft clothing, gloving and footwear leathers were tanned with alum, oil, and combinations of these two materials.With the discovery and introduction of basic chemicals like lime and sulfuric acid, tanners gradually abandoned their traditional methods and leather production slowly became a chemically based series of processes.


The growth of industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries created a demand for many new kinds of leathers, e.g., belting leathers to drive the machines being introduced into industry, special leathers for use in looms in the textile industry, leathers for use as diaphragms and washers, leathers for use in transport and for furniture upholstery.


At the end of the nineteenth century, the invention of the motor car, modern roads, new ranges of coal tar dyestuffs, the demand for softer, lightweight footwear with a fashionable appearance, and a general rise in the standard of living created a demand for soft, supple, colorful leather. The traditional vegetable tanned leather was too hard and thick for these requirements and thus, the use of the salts of the metal chromium was adopted and chrome tanning became the tannage for modern footwear and fashion leathers. It produces soft, supple, beautiful and fine leathers, reflecting the way we live.


I hope you enjoyed this little history lesson!


The Buckaroo family has been dedicated for 30 years in serving the western horseman the safest most durable Quality American Made Leather Horse Tack and Equipment available any where in the world.


At the manufacturing plant some of our employees have been with us for more than 20 years hand crafting tack (from Quality Leather Tanned and Cured by Hermann Oak Leather) for the Western rider, from Headstalls to reins, Breast Collars , hobbles, and all the training and pleasure riding equipment.


One of our most popular items are the Famous Buckaroo Reins , which have gained respect in the training and show rings because of their unmatched quality and broke in supple feel that enhances communication between horse and rider.


Our family is dedicated to the manufacture of Quality AMERICAN MADE horse tack! The use of Inferior imported tack is not an option at Buckaroo Leather!


Our family has been dedicated for 30 years in serving
the Western Horseman the safest most durable Quality
American made leather horse tack.......

Buckaroo John Brand

Buckaroo Leather, The Brand to Demand
Visit Our Unique Store Today
Buckaroo Leather Shopping Site

Friday, February 6, 2009

Growing Demand for Small Horse/Cob Size Tack ....

Demand for small horse and cob (another name for small horse)
size Tack is growing in popularity...



Trail and timed Endurance horses are smaller...
Gymkhana and Pony clubs are exploding in attendance..
Arabian horses are breed for endurance competition..


We are offering many different sizes now on our shopping
site.

Our family has been dedicated for 30 years in serving
the Western Horseman the safest most durable Quality
American made leather horse tack.......

Buckaroo John Brand

Buckaroo Leather, The Brand to Demand
Visit Our Unique Store Today
Buckaroo Leather Shopping Site