THE SADDLER AND HARNESS MAKER.
WORKSHOP.
The manufacture of saddles and harness for horses is one requiring very considerable skill and no little patience, since on the ability of the Saddler depends not only the health and comfort of the horse, but the safety of the rider. The beauty and finish of the harness and its appurtenances are so essential to the proper appearance presented by the whole equipage, that a very great deal of attention is now given even to the smallest details, such as buckles, mounts and ornamental sewing on straps and traces.
Spokeshave. Cutting Gauge. Dead Punch. Compasses. Mallet. Hand Iron.
The operations in the trade of the Saddler are so similar to those of the shoemaker, as far as the stitching and cutting of leather are concerned, that they require very little description. The most difficult part of his business is the skilful making of saddles. To fit the pigskin over the iron shape, and skilfully to arrange the padding, is often a very troublesome task, where a horse requires some peculiarity of make before he can be well fitted; and to ensure a perfect smoothness and finish a skilful use of the hand iron and the spokeshave is necessary. Similar care has to be taken in forming the collars to which the harness is attached; and indeed no part of the Saddler’s work can be carelessly performed without serious risk either to the horse or its owner.
Needle and Thread. Clamps. Lead Piece. Hand Knife. Punch. Round Knife. Pricking Iron. Hand Knife. Hammer.
As a great part of the Saddlers’ work consists of sewing, he uses the clamps to hold the leather between his knees, in the same way as they are used by the shoemaker; but although he employs the sewing awl for drilling holes, or, at all events, the pricking iron, the sewing is done with needles and strongly waxed thread. The various kinds of knives are used for cutting and paring the leather; the cutting gauge and compasses for regulating the cutting, the hammer for driving the small nails used in the work, and the mallet for striking the pricking iron or punches. The punch is used for making the holes in the straps to receive the tongue of the buckle, and is therefore a hollow tube with a sharp cutting edge, so that it will cut out a little round piece of the leather. The dead punch is made solid, and is not intended for cutting. The leather, when it has to be cut with the punch, is placed on the lead piece, a small square block of lead, which being soft allows a slight yielding of the leather, and at the same time does not blunt the edge of the punch when it has passed through the hole.
Edging Iron. Seat Awl. Packing Awl. Sewing Awl. Double Crease. Single Crease. Nail Claw.
The seat awl and packing awl are used in the padding and making of saddles and collars; the nail claw for removing nails by which the leather has been fastened down.
The various kinds of creases are for the purpose of making channels in the leather along the edges which have to be sewn, so that the stitches are sunk below the surface, and the thread will not so easily wear out. The edging iron is for a similar purpose. In common saddlery some of the comparatively unimportant straps, or the smaller gear, are not sewn at the edges, and indeed do not require it, although a great deal of the Saddler’s sewing is for ornamental purposes. In order to make the whole look uniform, however, these straps are not left plain, but are creased at the edges, and the channels thus made are marked with the pricking iron, to give them the appearance of having been stitched. The Saddler is better off than the shoemaker, inasmuch as he generally sits to work at a bench, and need not occupy such a constrained and unhealthy position.
Some account has already been given of the preparation of leather, but it will be desirable here to mention other sorts, some of which particularly belong to the business of harness making.
Screw Crease. Varnish Pot. Sponge.
Sheep-skins, when simply tanned, are employed for inferior bookbinding, for leathering bellows, and for various other purposes for which a cheap leather is required. All the whit-leather, as it is termed, which is used for whip-lashes, bags, aprons, &c. is of sheep-skin; as are also the cheaper kinds of wash-leather, of which gloves, under-waistcoats, and other articles of dress, are made. Mock, or imitation morocco, and most of the other coloured and dyed leathers used for women’s and children’s shoes, carriage-linings, and the covering of stools, chairs, sofas, writing-tables, &c. are also made of sheep-skin.
Lamb-skins are mostly dressed white or coloured for gloves; and those of goats and kids supply the best qualities of light leather, the former being the material of the best morocco, while kid leather affords the finest material for gloves and ladies’ shoes. Leather from goat-skins, ornamented and sometimes gilt, was formerly used as a hanging or covering for walls.
Harness.
Deer and antelope skins, dressed in oil, are used chiefly for riding breeches. Horse-hides, which, considering their size, are thin, are tanned and curried, and are used by the Harness Maker, especially for collars, and occasionally, when pared thin, for the upper leathers of ladies’ walking shoes. Dog-skins are thick and rough, and make excellent leather. Seal-skins produce a leather similar but inferior to that supplied by dog-skins; and hog-skins afford a thin but dense leather, which is used mostly for covering the seats of saddles.
Currying is the general name given to the various operations of dressing leather after the tanning is completed, by which the requisite smoothness, lustre, colour, and suppleness, are imparted. The processes of the Currier are various. The first is styled “dipping” the leather. It consists in moistening with water, and beating upon a trellis-work of wooden spars with a mallet or mace. After this beating, by which the stiffness of the hide or skin is destroyed, it is laid over an inclined board, and scraped and cleaned, and, wherever it is too thick, pared or shaved down on the flesh side by the careful application of various two-handled knives, and then thrown again into water, and well scoured by rubbing the grain or hair side with pumice-stone, or with a piece of slatey grit, by which means the bloom, a whitish matter which is found upon the surface in tanning, is removed.
Rule. Pincers. File. Pliers.
The leather is then rubbed with the pommel, a rectangular piece of hard wood, about twelve inches long by five broad, grooved on the under surface, and fastened to the hand. The Currier uses several of these instruments, with grooves of various degrees of fineness, and also, for some purposes, pommels of cork, which are not grooved at all. The object of this rubbing is to give grain and pliancy to the leather. The leather is then scraped with tools applied nearly perpendicular to its surface, and worked forcibly with both hands, to reduce such parts as may yet be left too thick, to a uniform substance. After this it is dressed with the round knife, a singular instrument which pares off the coarser fleshy parts of the skin. In addition to these operations, the Currier uses occasionally polishers of smooth wood or glass, for rubbing the surface of the leather; and when the leather is intended for the use of the shoemaker, he applies to it some kind of greasy composition called dubbing or stuffing.
Leather is occasionally dressed “black on the grain,” or having the grain side instead of the flesh coloured. The currying operations in such a case are similar to those above described, but the finishing processes are rather different. The leather is rubbed with a grit-stone, to remove any wrinkles and smooth down the coarse grain. The grain is finally raised by repeatedly rubbing over the surface, in different directions, with the pommel or graining board.
Japanned leather of various kinds is used in coach making, harness making, and for various other purposes. Patent leather is covered with a coat of elastic japan, which gives a surface like polished glass, impermeable to water; and hides prepared in a more perfectly elastic mode of japanning, which will permit folding without cracking the surface, are called enamelled leather. Such leather has the japan annealed, something in the same mode as glass; the hides are laid between blankets, and subjected to the heat of an oven at a peculiar temperature during several hours.