Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Project Tandem Harness: Completed!


Well, 100+ hrs of work, 52 buckles, 2 Palouse models, and over $200 in hardware alone, I am finally finished with this tandem harness!
Luckily, Squidly arrived just in time for the photo shoot!
Unfortunately, I didn't notice until I went to put the crupper on him that he has an attached tail! Normally, with attached tails, I would split the crupper and then "sticky wax" it to the sides of the tail at the base to give the illusion that it went underneath. But, for this order, the horse it really will go on does not have an attached tail - so just ignore that the crupper is sitting on top of the tail in all of these photos!!
Here they are together - this is a tandem harness, where one horse is front of the other, as opposed to side by side in a pairs hitch.
Here is the leader bridle.

This order is meant for a specific time period, so the bridle has an overcheck, or more commonly called a bearing rein. When used correctly, they are not a cruel device as depicted in Black Beauty. Today, they are set up just a little differently.
The wheeler bridle needs "Roger rings" on the sides of his bridle so the reins from the leader can pass through. I'm also super happy about the way these face drops turned out.
This is how it looked in a previous harness I made. You can see that it is more rounded, flat, and has no stitch markings! A massive improvement if I do say so myself!


Overall, this harness is much more detailed and really forced me to research what I was creating so it would be as accurate as possible. Each harness I make has had major improvements. Although this harness took me MUCH longer than I was anticipating, I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and I hope my customer will as well! You can see the full album here: Blue Diamond Tack - 2010 Orders Posted by Picasa

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