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All year long we have filled our tack store with beautiful
hand made saddles shipped in from Alabama. We took some time off
in early December to visit the saddle makers and their shops. It was
extremely educational and lots of fun! We were able to wander the shops
watching the hand craftsmanship that goes into a saddle. It's no wonder a
good saddle costs a lot! There is a lot of work in just one saddle.
Each piece of leather carefully cut, shaped, tooled and assembled to make a
great saddle. We were able to visit 3 different shops on nestled in the
hills of
Alabama.
- Jimmy Black's Saddle Shop is a small building next to his house with a
warm little stove! Saddle Patterns hang from the wall waiting to be
used. A skirt on the tooling table, he had just started that morning.
What a neat place! He had about 20 saddles stacked up on stands he had
finished a few weeks ago for us.
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Jimmy's Shop
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Jimmy Black with Rod & Robert
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Inside The Shop
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The Tooling Table
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Hand Tooling
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Watching Jimmy work
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Rod's Shopping!
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Great Hand Made Saddles
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Part of The Secutrity Team!
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- Rocking R Saddlery is right down the road from Jimmy's place.
The finished saddles were lined up from one end to the other getting ready to
ship. Each workbench has 10 to 15 saddles being worked on for customers.
The quality of work they do here is amazing! Each saddle is carefully
laid out in pieces
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Randal, Rod & Robert
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Front of Shop
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Finishing Chuck's Saddle
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Catalog Saddle
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Triple C Saddlery is a family owned and operated!
They have a nice shop producing fine quality saddle at a working man's price!
Although we dropped in unexpectedly, they were more than happy to show us around
their place. A friendly environment which we were felt welcome. A
great saddle contact we are glad to have met, and hope to visit again in the
near future. It's amazing it all starts out with a tree, and
becomes a fine saddle.
For years Rod has been buying tack from Robert at his
family ran tack shop. We finally had a chance to stop and visit them!
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Robert, Roxanne & Rod
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How Much???
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Robert & Roxanne
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On the way home from Alabama we got stranded in a
winter storm! Seems we couldn't beat the weather! ! The roads
were terrible! Rod didn't want to take his chances trying to cross the
mountain. Luckily the wonderful staff at Comfort Inn on Jellico Mountain
had a room for us. The hotel had all kinds of wonderful memorabilia on the
walls, which provided some entertainment for the evening! They even had
pizza delivered for all of us stranded travelers! The next morning
it had warmed up and the ice had melted. Crossing Jellico Mountain was
still tricky because of the fog! We were glad to get back into Kentucky!
Robert took this picture of Rod, glad to be off the mountain!
Here's a few pictures we had taken a top Jellico Mountain.
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I-75 on Jellico
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Rod found new pee spot!
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Rod on Jellico Mtn.
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What a view!
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The saddle shops were only part of our trip. As
always we make the best out of every trip! We stopped in Lexington, Ky. at
Haygard-Davidson McGee to visit. We have most of our Coggins testing and
health papers done
by their wonderful staff.
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