1890 UP Saddle Refurbishment update

Over the last couple of months there has been a bit of work done on the refurbishment of the 1890 Universal Pattern Saddle.

Now I have to admit the main reason for the increase in activity has been two fold. The first was having been contacted by Gerard Hogan, a Military Saddler from Australia who had spotted a few “quirks” with my saddle that he was interested in getting some more details on. The other fact was that I needed something to be a focus away from the day job.

The result was that I did some work with Gerard to supply him details, photos and in some cases traces/ templates of some of the particular parts of the saddle to help with his research of the 1890 UP. That has really increased my knowledge about the saddle and how rare it is.

With its rareity in mind I’m aiming to refurbish it but with keeping as much of the original parts as I can.

So where are we at the moment?

The Saddle Tree (Arches and Timber boards/ fans) have been cleaned up and the arches have been repainted with metal paint and the boards have been cleaned, lightly sanded and given a couple of coats of varish.

All the leather work has been cleaned and scrubbed. With the advice of Gerard I used sunlight soap to help lift the 120 years (ish) worth of crud off the leather work, that did a cracking job of cleaning the leather but it took a blood age to clean the sink afterwards – Just as well that I did it out here in Mons, rather than at home where the GOC UKLF (AKA the Long Haired General) would have killed me!

One of the finds from the scrubbing clean was that there was a makers stamp in the middle of the Seat Leather. Showing D Mason & Son Ltd, Birmingham, 1902. With finding this set of markings the saddle now has 3 sets of period marks – 1901 for the Arches, 1902 for the Seat and 1903 for the wooden boards.

All of the leather was allowed to dry and then has a good coating of Leather balsam to get some life back into it.  with that done all of the smooth leather was given several coats of Dark Tan boot polish and the rough sides given a good covering of brown boot dubbin.

With some of the life now back in the leather it was time to start doing a few of the smaller repairs, such as replacing some of the damaged/ failed stitching. this was mainly on the front flaps of the seat. One of which had to be completely removed and restitched back on.

There are still parts of the saddle leather work that needs repair, in particular is the Y Girth straps. As part of the chat with Gerard it appears that the shape of the leather panel indicates that these are a second edition version and quite rare, so the plan is to replace the damange leather strap only and to keep the rest as original as possible, so brass rivets have been ordered and a local leather worker is making me a new replacement strap. (I suspect that they have all been replaced at some point in the past already by the look of them – which is not unreasonable as the UP Saddles are designed to be fixed in this way ).

The next phase of the refurbishment is to put new webbing straps onto the tree to support the seat. I’m in the process of ordering new screws for the refitting of the Y straps and the Sweat flaps and I need to get replacement short straps to replace the broken ones on both of the felts and also on the felt numnah.

So I’ve made a start on the refurbishment and there is still a good bit to go at the moment but it is something that I don’t want to rush too much as I want to get the saddle back to a condition that I can use it for riding and not just as a show piece.

The other item that has now been added for the saddle is that Gerard made a set of period appropriate Saddle Wallets and straps to go with the 1890 UP when it is complete.

Gerard also added some Derbyshire Imperial Yeomanry markings on the wallets and straps as he knew that I intended to set the saddle up as a Yeomanry Saddle and the Derbyshire Yeomanry was my local mounted unit, a really nice touch and very appreciated.

I wanted the wallets to be darker in colour to match the saddle so a dark brown/ havanna brown leather dye was applied. and once dry the inside of the wallets was given a bit of nourishment with dubbin and the exterior was given several coats of dark tan boot polish and good going over with the boot brushes to buff them up.

I really must thank Gerard Hogan for his excellent work on the wallets and also his help and advice with the refurbishment of the saddle. I still have a quite a bit to do but things are moving now and I can see it starting to come together.

The next phase of work will be over the autumn period and hopefully I’ll have a completed project by Christmas. If you have any comments or thoughts on the work so far then please let me know via comments or via the contact page.