Saddle Fit - Jeff Gollehon

Jeff Gollehon is with us. He has Grizzly Saddlery at Great Falls, Montana. It's a full service shop, but they also make custom saddles, and he finds a problem with saddle fit that's a little bit different and kind of interesting.

 

"One of the things that is, to me, that I have found over my career that is probably one of the most important things, the stirp slot on the tree, on the underside of the tree where your stirp leather goes up over the tree and back down, and that's the part that has the holes in it for your stirp leather adjustment, that piece of leather has to go up over the top of the tree and back down, and it sits under the tree between your sheepskin and the wooden tree. And that's actually what holds the weight of the person when that person is riding. And what we are seeing in a lot of trees, whether they're factory-made companies that we carry in the store, or even some of the custom trees that we see come through, that bar slot that has to be relieved for that stirp leather, from my experience, is usually not deep enough."