The Building Blocks: Everything Else

This is (finally!) the last post in this little series about what I stock my studio with. Part One is about leather, Part Two is about dye and lace, and Part Three is about hardware.

For the purpose of making such small tack, there's a lot of clutter on my desk at any given time. Admittedly, a lot of this junk is stuff I only use once per project, or only have in case I need it for a specialty project (like leather paint). I do, however, have a core arsenal of regularly used tools.

First and foremost is something that I almost never put down while I'm working: my trusty tweezers. These I've had for forever, and I don't remember where they originally came from but they're perfect. I use them basically as an extension of my fingers: to hold buckles while I slip lace through, feeding tongues through buckles, holding pieces together while they dry, dabbing glue onto strap ends, you name it. Tweezers are the #1 way to avoid unnecessary suffering and frustration in the process of making mini tack.

As far as actual tools go, I've been using the same set of jewelry-making tools my entire tack making career. These originally came in some sort of fancy roll-up case (and I'm pretty sure there were more of them), but these are the ones that have stuck around:

Needle-ish nose pliers. The tips aren't needle tiny, but the round tapered ends work great for making all different sizes of jump rings out of wire (bits, especially).

Flat-jaw pliers. I don't actually know what these are called- I mentally refer to them as "D ring pliers," because that's what I primarily use them for. The tips are the perfect shape for bending wire into D rings, and the flat jaws are great for tamping on buckles to make them look less like wire and more like cast hardware.

These are my third pair of tin snips, and by now I really feel like I should have learned to just spring for the more expensive kind, but my cheap tendencies have won out. This pair is the mini version, which was a terrible decision, but now I'm determined to get my money's worth from these little suckers. If any of you are thinking about getting into tack making, go for the $15-20 ones.

Moving onto gooey substances, we have my left-hand man, Gum Tragacanth. This stuff is the bomb for taming leather fuzzies, training laced reins to lay flat, making saddle pommels smooth and seamless, and every other leather-taming activity.

Just noticed this is the French side. Whoops.

Super Shene from Tandy is the leather finish I've been using to give tack that nice "well-oiled" finish. Sometimes it also helps hold the color in and prevent staining ponies- but sometimes that just happens anyway. (I'm on the hunt for a finish or sealant that totally stops that- anybody have suggestions?)

I like working on this slightly raised glass board, not only because it's a solid work surface (with straight lines for reference) but also because it provides an edge to skive against. Win-win!

The board is also great for pouring my Tacky Glue directly onto in a little puddle in the corner, before dabbing on tiny amounts where I need them with my tweezers. This scale is just too little to try and use glue directly from the bottle. I've recently learned that I can do the exact same thing with my super glue, in a much smaller (and faster-working!) puddle on my glass board. Both glue types just pop right off when they're dry. I've only ever used Original Tacky Glue for 99% of my gluing (leather to leather) mostly because it works perfectly for me but also because it's cheap and easy to find at just about any self-respecting craft store. I don't really have any brand loyalty in super glue; any clear liquid variation does the trick. I've had a lot of luck with Loctite.

Other stuff I'm constantly using: my big ol' sewing scissors (they seem ridiculously large for this scale, but they do the job!), Xacto knife with tons of extra blades on hand to change out and keep sharp, pointy sculpting tool for marking where on straps buckles need to go, fine-tip Sharpie, mechanical pencil, thick-ish sewing needle for punching holes, double-sided tape, and various textures of fine sandpaper cut into workable little sections. I also recently purchased a little carrying caddy from Micheal's to stow all this junk in when I'm feeling tidy.

I'm sure I've said this before, but what's great about making tack this small is that you almost never have to replenish your supplies. All of this stuff is pretty much a one-time investment, assuming you're not like me and won't lose your knife/glue/snips ten times, buy new ones, then find the old ones. Even stuff like Gum Tragacanth and glue- I bought this little bottle of GT in 2011 and it's probably 75% full. Your supplies are more likely to go missing or bad than run out. Ever.

So to finish off my shopping list:

• Tweezers -these are my exact ones, but any needle-point style will work (I had no idea mine were $15? Crazy.)
• Jewelry/beading pliers- I think I got these at my local beading store, but Micheal's and JoAnn's have plenty of their own versions.
• Snips -this is the pair I last killed off. I can't for the life of me find the nicer, blue-handle kind.
• Gum Tragacanth
• Super Shene -I lump mine in with Rio Rondo orders.
• Cutting mat/board

And the following items from Any Old Craft Store, USA:

• Original Tacky Glue
• Loctite Super Glue
• Scissors
• Xacto knife
• Pointy instrument
• Sharpie
• Mechanical pencil
• Sewing needle
• Double-sided tape
• Sandpaper

And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes the tour of just about every single thing used in the making of my tack. For those of you who originally requested this series, I hope this was helpful, and to the rest of you, I hope this was somehow insightful or interesting (I don't know about you, but pictures of scissors and wire is my idea of high entertainment). 

If you guys have any tack tips, how-to's, or other "behind the scenes" type posts you'd like to see, let me know!

(By the way, new poll is up! I want to make you guys free stuff. Let me know what you want to see!)

The Building Blocks: Hardware

When I say hardware, I mean anything in a tack set that is made of any type of metal or metal-like material.

Starting with my favorite: stirrups.

Old picture, I know I know

Your options for Stablemate scale English stirrup irons are basically limited to these guys from Horsing Around over in the UK, and the ones The World of Model Horse Collecting carries on eBay.

Anna Kirby compares them in detail here, but for me the bottom line is that HAUK's irons have a better shape, size, and price (which is nice when I'm usually buying ten pairs at a time!). 

Of course, if you don't want to drop money on cast irons, you have other options. Some people are talented enough to make attractive stirrups from bent wire, or you could try your hand at sculpting your own.

My sculpt on the left, HA iron on the right.

The only other fancy cast hardware a set could need is a bit. All of my past bits have been made of wire, but earlier this week I took the plunge and ordered a full cheek snaffle from The World of Model Horse Collecting (TWMHC). They carry a few different styles of mini scale bits, but I figured a full cheek would be the hardest to make on my own.

And everything else- all my buckles, D rings, you name it- is wire.

26 gauge is the heaviest, used for making bits and nailheads. Then there's 28, which I used to use for everything else, but now is saved just for D rings, breastplate centers, and other in-between size things. And finally, 32 gauge, which is what all my buckles and tongues are made of. It's thin enough to look in scale on a tiny strap on a mini's face, but sturdy enough to hold its shape.

28 gauge wire bit and 32 gauge wire buckles and tongues.

And I'm actually considering getting myself even smaller wire specifically for the buckle's tongues (which, on real buckles, are thinner than the rest of the buckle). But then it would be too flimsy? Maybe? I don't know. Better try it and find out!

Makin' our way through the shopping list:

• HAUK stirrups
• TWMHC stirrups (she also carries some nifty gold-plated ones that I've been tempted by more than once...)
• My current supply of wire is equal parts from Micheal's, eBay, and my local beading store. Any jewelry making or art supply store probably has what you need! If you buy online, make sure you're signing up for jewelry making type wire instead of house repair/electrical wire- the latter will still work, but I prefer the cleanness and shine of jewelry-grade stuff. 

Next up is tools, supplies, and everything else!

The Building Blocks: Dye and Lace

Kind of a part two to the last post.

One thing that's always in my Rio Rondo orders is leather lace. RR sells it in five different colors and five different widths, but I really only ever need the thinnest size, 1/16".

(And sometimes 3/32", on the right, for parts of harnesses or what have you)

While in big tack, you use lace off the spool for pretty much all your strap goods, in mini tack, I cut most of my own lace from the dyed piece of skiver I'm working with. This is mostly to make sure the straps are the same color as the rest of the set- 99% of my tack is some shade of brown, but RR only supplies one, one-size-fits-all "brown" color.

So I end up only using RR lace for black strappy things (black always matches black!), and harnesses or halters or other things that don't need to match something made of skiver. I wish I could use it for all my straps, because it's so, so much easier to prepare lace than it is to cut your own, lace is stronger and less likely to rip even at these teensy tiny widths, and RR's lace will always be a more consistent width than what I cut. But alas.

Lace bridle, stirrup leathers, and billets on this set.

And still, the 1/16" is about halter width on a mini's face, so I end up splitting it for the huge majority of my straps anyway. (I think I'll have a post just on cutting lace from skiver, and splitting spool lace, at some point. Hopefully.)

[insert clever and relevant segue here]

Dye!

I love dye. I love dyeing. It's just a favorite.

This is another thing I get from RR, but mostly because it's convenient to lump them in with the rest of my order. There's tons of places out there that carry Fiebing's. I actually just treated myself to three fun new colors from a supplier on eBay, seeing as I have six whole square feet of leather to dye and use. 

My illustrious dyeing station- some paper bags on top of a plastic bin lid on top of a bunch of crap in my garage. Whatever works!

I've only ever used Fiebing's "Leather Dye" in the past, but I've heard that their Oil Dye is supposed to be better, so I ordered some up for myself. It's drying as I type, but I have high hopes! So far my only annoyance is that the Oil Dye, which is about a dollar or so more expensive than the Leather Dye, doesn't come with a dauber while the Leather dye does. Why, Fiebing??

So check off our supply list:

• Leather lace
• Dye, dye, or dye
• Daubers in case you have Oil Dye

Other helpful stuff:

• How to prepare your spool lace (Braymere's tack tips are responsible for at least half my tack making knowledge, and links to her blogs will definitely be a regular thing here)
• One way to dye your leather (with skiver, I find it's easier just to apply dye to the rough side and let it soak through, then go back and add more to the grain side if it needs it)
• How to cut your own lace (Anna Kirby is what I aspire to be in life. Her tack makes me cry, but in a good way.)

Next up: hardware!

The Building Blocks: Leather

Welcome to the first post in a series about what I stock my studio with!

First off, some different perspective: The blogging goddess, Jennifer Buxton, has this exact kind of series over on her blog that I may or may not be totally copying inspired by with these posts of my own. If you're into "big" (hey, if Traditional people can call Stablemates minis, then Stablemate people should have a word for Traditionals) tack, that's an excellent resource to check out. Her blog in general is solid gold.

Before I dive into my thoughts and feelings and information about leather, I have to get this rant out of the way:

By and large, this hobby (and especially performance) is a Traditional/Classic scale game. "Big"-only people are far more common than mini-only people, and the halter and performance ring alike are dominated by "big" pieces. And there's nothing wrong with that! I completely understand; in 1:9 and 1:12 scale, there's just so much more room, and it's easier to fit a more detailed paint job or piece of tack onto something big enough to clearly see. I love my bigs. They're just the right size to feel just perfect and satisfying in your hand, not to mention how welcome they are as a break from staring at minis all day.

Breyer is the roots of this beautiful tree of a hobby, and they're big on pushing Traditional scale horses harder than any other scale, and have always been. You'll notice that "big" models are marketed as collector's items or pieces of artwork, while Stablemates are usually peddled as kid's toys. Not to say that there aren't some beautiful mini customs and amazing mini artist resin sculptures, but generally speaking, "bigs" are much more widely accepted.

(here comes the part where I get to the point of my post)

What all this means as a mini tack maker is that there aren't as many resources marketed directly to tack making. Hardware, for example, is something you can find tons of on Rio Rondo or The World of Model Horse Collecting-- for bigs. They just don't make mini scale hardware in the same quality and variety! The greater demand for bigger scale anything is magnified when it comes to tack, because even those who are cool with collecting minis and showing halter, don't necessarily want to go out and make tack for them. Understandably.

And all of that blabber boils down to: mini tack makers are a creative bunch. We can't just order some nice shiny D rings or curb bits from RR; we have to figure out how to make them from scratch. Which, for me, is just another part of the fun. :)

Let's talk leather.

While in big tack, you generally need two different weights or thicknesses of leather to work with- tooling leather or calf for the bigger pieces, and thin skiver for smaller details and to cover things- in mini tack, I exclusively use skiver. The variation in thickness needed throughout the project is achieved by using unskived skiver (just how it comes shipped to me) for the thick pieces, and skiving and sanding it down when I need it thin.

For most of my tack making career, I've made everything from the skiver Rio Rondo sells. 

This is nice stuff. It's a nice natural, "buff" color, and one 5x6" piece is enough to make probably around five-ish mini saddles and girths, plus some boots or saddlebags or something.

But after ordering countless pieces of this stuff for $4.50 a pop, I began to notice my issues with the stuff more and more. For one, because it's just a small piece of a hide, you never really know what you're going to get. I've gotten RR skiver that was thick and stiff enough to almost pass as tooling leather, in the same shipment as a piece so paper thin I actually couldn't use it for saddle flaps. Also, sometimes you get a grain (the texture on the good side) so tight it makes a clean, smooth finish, and sometimes you get a grain big enough to look like alligator skin in mini scale.

Mmmm, grainy.

The variation isn't RR's fault, it's just the luck of the draw. Still, annoying to work with. I eventually came to a place where I figured that for the amount of the stuff that I was going through, I might as well invest in a big chunk that would last me a long time.

I did some googling, some online shopping and poking around, and finally settled on a hide of "pliver" off ebay that looked like it could be thin enough and have a tight enough grain to work for me. Plus, it was about $20 for six square feet of the stuff.

In case you didn't catch that, let's do some math.

RR's skiver is $4.50 for 30 square inches. That's 15 cents per square inch.

This pliver is $20 for six square feet, or 864 square inches. That's a little over 2 cents per square inch.

So you see my incentive.

After interrogating the poor seller on every aspect of the leather I could possibly check out without actually holding it in my hands (How well does it take to dye? What's the grain like? How squishy is it?), I took the leap.

With my luck, I fully expected it to be awful quality, completely unworkable, $20 down the drain. I mean, I assume from the name that this isn't real leather. Pleather, pliver, all very sketchy.

Well whatever you want to call it, and whatever animal or machine this stuff is from, I have hit the jackpot.

This massive piece is pure white in color, and the majority of it is about the thickness of a typical piece of RR skiver, which is perfect because that's the thickness I'm most accustomed to working with. 

But the real beauty of this stuff is how there's some variation in thickness throughout the hide- some areas are a little thicker, perfect for a western skirt, and some are paper thin, which saves me time and bloodsweat&tears skiving down the thicker stuff. I can see how this kind of variation would be obnoxious with bigger tack, when you would need to cut say, a saddle flap big enough to be uneven in thickness throughout, but when my biggest cut piece is one inch square, this works perfectly for me. 

The grain on the white undyed stuff is about as noticeable as the grain on undyed RR skiver, I'd say. Which isn't as small as I'd like it, but the amount of white leather tack I'm making isn't substantial enough for that to really be an issue. Because as soon as you dye this stuff, the grain fades. And because you're dyeing from a white base instead of a natural-tone base, the color really comes through the tone it's supposed to.

That's the RR skiver on the bottom, and pliver on top, dyed at the same time with the exact same dye in the exact same way. (The pliver was a test scrap for dye; most of it doesn't have those ridges).

I love how this turns out, because if I wanted that dark tone the skiver has on the pliver, I just have to go back and put another layer of dye on. But if I was hoping for the pliver's tone on the skiver, I'm out of luck and my $4.50 piece of leather is stuck with that dark, dark color.

In my experience with Fiebing's dyes on RR's skiver, the leather's natural softness and drape is killed as soon as it's dyed. It becomes stiff and kind of paper-y, and you need to work with it to get it to achieve a more relaxed shape. This isn't the case with the pliver- even with dye, it still feels like high quality leather.

Now, this isn't entirely a good thing. 99% of the pieces I cut for an English saddle get skived down from the skiver's original thickness. This process involves alternating between slicing the rough side of the leather horizontally to shave off thickness, and sanding it down to maintain an even thickness throughout the whole thing. On the stiff RR leather, this isn't really a problem. Tedious, yes, but manageable, and generally if I cut out a skirt shape then skive it, it'll still fit my saddle.

The softness and elasticity of the pliver makes this process a little different, because it likes to stretch out and grow as it thins. This makes its color lighter, and messes up the shape of a cut piece.

This pony saddle is the first completed piece made entirely from the pliver, and it's all made from the same piece dyed dark brown. You can see in the knee rolls (the thinnest pieces of the whole saddle, probably) that the color tone is noticeably lighter from all the stretching and thinning.

Luckily, I think this looks awesome.

So today we check leather off our supply list:

• Rio Rondo skiver
• The eBay pliver

I was going to talk about leather lace and dye here too, but I think that'll be a post of its own. Stay tuned!