Riding High on Reputation : Custom Saddle Makers in Demand for Their Expertise

Caedimenphobia is the name psychologists use to describe the fear some people have that parts of their bodies will become permanently bonded with Super Glue.

The space-age adhesive is on the mind of Steve Gonzalez, a saddle maker from Ojai, as he lists the injuries that can happen to those who craft saddles by hand.

Razor-sharp knives cheerfully flay even the most callused hand. Needle-fine awls effortlessly run through reckless palms, and the heavy-duty sewing machine can lace a careless fingernail--zip--just like that.

But the most common injury is a repetitive one that comes from drawing tight the threads stitched by hand.

“The thread bites into your fingers and splits your skin,” Gonzalez said. “Splits it right in the joints where you can’t put a bandage on it. This is the only thing that works,” he said, producing a tube of super adhesive. “I glue the cuts together. This stuff is great.”

Who’d have thought it? Caedimenphilia.

While daubing industrial adhesive in open wounds is odd by most standards, it’s a fair example of the extent to which Ventura County’s handful of custom saddle makers will go in their quest to build the best in equine equipage.

Their creations aren’t the silver bedecked things you see in the Rose Parade. What Ventura County produces are rock-solid designs built for granite-hard horsemen. Customers include endurance riders who compete in races that last for days and the handful of remaining cowboys who spend years working cattle.

“I make saddles for buckaroos,” Oak View saddle maker David Brannan said. “Guys who still make their living earning $800 a month punching cows, if you can call that a living.”

Brannan was a sheriff’s deputy in Ventura County for 12 years before he started building saddles two years ago. Like three of the four saddle makers in Ventura County, Brannan started the craft after working in other fields.

George Randall of Ojai is the exception. His field has always been the cow pasture. Randall, who is 81, started punching cattle at 16, when he drove 200 head up from Ventura over the trail that is now Highway 33 and into the Cuyama Valley. Since then he has raised cattle in six California counties, all over Arizona and some of Mexico, too.

“As near as I know, I’m the only saddle maker who rode horses for a living,” Randall said. “That’s why cowboys like my saddles.”

A Randall saddle is plain as sand and made for the gritty task of roping cattle. Period.

It features a stout saddle horn, a generous cantle and wide, wide stirrups.

Randall explains the stirrups this way: “If you were going to stand on a 1-by-6 board all day, which way would you turn it?”

One guy who does spend all day with his foot in the stirrup is Fred Reyes, 60, a Cuyama Valley rancher. It’s not unusual for Reyes to spend eight hours or more each day overseeing 300 head of cattle, all of it done from the seat of a Randall saddle.

“For a while there, I was getting a saddle every year or two ‘cause they weren’t right, but I’ve had this Randall saddle for about five years,” Reyes said, “and it’s doin’ just fine. I’ve probably sold a half dozen of his saddles to cowboys around here.”

At two to three times the cost of production saddles, custom models are for those who can tell the difference. Reyes said it’s not unusual for a cowboy earning $1,000 a month to spend $2,000 to $3,000 on a saddle.

Reyes provides a simple explanation involving what anatomists refer to as the coccyx and posterior tuberosity of the ischium, collectively referred to in the vernacular as The Butt.

“Unless the seat is narrow enough in front, your hips get tired,” Reyes said. That’s when you start walking like a cowboy.

Accommodating distinctive tuberosities takes David Brannan as much as three hours. He starts by applying six layers of leather to the seat of the saddle tree.

“Then I have the customer sit on it for an hour or so while I carve it to fit with a draw knife.”

The attention lavished on the seat is, in part, a tribute to its role in the evolution of what we recognize as the western saddle, according to a Smithsonian survey of early American saddles titled “Man Made Mobile.”

Settlers from the Atlantic Coast rode west on English-style saddles, effete designs ill-suited for the rigors of the frontier. They soon learned that a deeper seat provided more stability for the rider crossing uneven terrain.

The seat, along with the high front fork, comprised the enduring Hollywood image of a sturdy saddle trussed to a tireless steed. But oddly enough, the icon that’s so evocative of the American West was a Mexican invention.

Even the saddle horn was a Mexican import.

The horn evolved as Spanish settlers raising cattle in Mexico found they needed a way to rope and brand cattle on the open range. They developed a strictly utilitarian saddle with a rugged horn to dally the lariat.

The Smithsonian reported that the U.S. Army adopted the design and swiftly applied it to great effect in the Mexican-American War. The resultant land grab opened up the Southwest to an increased number of settlers who further diversified the vaquero design, thereby contributing a sort of synergy to the western saddle’s evolution.

By the 1880s cowboys as far north as the Great Plains had already established a style of saddle all their own, said Moorpark saddle maker Walter McCurdy. Although these saddles were unique, they bore the unmistakable influence of saddles developed on Mexican haciendas 2,000 miles away.

The next direction in saddle construction was again initiated by the Army when, in 1855, it adopted the design proposed by a cavalry captain named McClellan. The lightweight, durable McClellan remained standard issue until World War II, and it’s still the design from which Ojai saddle maker Steve Gonzalez draws his inspiration.

Gonzalez uses traditional ingredients of French bridle leather, European pine pitch and bee’s wax, as well as synthetics like Dacron, neoprene and fiberglass to produce remarkably lightweight saddles for endurance riders.

“The majority of our saddles are for people who ride their horses as much as 100 miles in a day,” Gonzalez said.

The demands of the event means it’s just as important that the saddle fit the horse as the rider. So Gonzalez starts with a plaster cast of the horse’s back and builds a fiberglass tree that uniquely fits that animal.

That sort of innovation and attention led to a patent and the respect of other saddle makers, who call Gonzalez a genius. People mail the plaster casts to him from as far away as Australia. Three of the entrants at the world endurance championship in Holland this fall will be mounted on Gonzalez saddles.

The only local horse wearing a Gonzalez saddle is owned by Wilma Melville, 60, of Ojai, who competes in races such as the “Capitol To Capitol” which stretches between Carson City, Nev. and Sacramento.

“It’s five days at a brisk trot,” Melville said, “some cantering.”

Although Melville said she has a saddle by a well-known maker, her horse develops a sore spot near the withers. So she decided to try one of Gonzalez’s designs. She liked it.

At $1,600 for the base model, it’s not a cheap experiment. Custom saddles are in general an expensive proposition. Can there be that much demand?

“Absolutely,” McCurdy said. “People say to me, ‘I’ll bet you don’t want another saddle maker moving in.’ I say I wish one would. Might take some of the pressure off.”

McCurdy said with more than 150 training barns around Moorpark alone, he’s had to refer people to other saddle makers. In the first six months of business his gross revenues were $36,000.

“I’m 51, starting my second career and it’s been such a roaring success that I can’t believe you can make so much money and have so much fun.”

Guide to Saddle Makers

* David Brannan, 305 Old Grade Road, Oak View. 649-3853

* Steve Gonzalez, 210 Golden West Road, Ojai, 646-2982

* Walter McCurdy, 643 Moorpark Ave., Moorpark. 523-8287

* George Randall, 1340 S. Loma Drive, Ojai. 646-3225