Antique FA Meanea High Back A-Fork Cowboy Saddle 1890

JD Alan · March 10, 2009, 09:54:52 AM

Hey RT, I just read about your friends in need of the Lord's touch. We will indeed pray for them. I've got a great group of "Prayer Warriors" in our church I can contact via e-mail, and I will do so right now! JD

RollingThunder · March 10, 2009, 10:50:27 AM

Parson ... Thanks much. I know he'd appreciate it a bunch. Like my pastor used to say, it's easier to lift someone up when more than one person is on their knees.

David - I truly appreciate the offer of help. I was wondering if one of the people I was bidding against what you, especially when they asked if the model was a 14P or a 14X. LOL.

There are two missing pieces on this saddle, the horn leather, and the onside jockey ... suggestions?

cowboy316 · March 10, 2009, 11:06:01 AM

hey RT
as for the missing piece on the horn if i remember right it was a piece of hard wood shaped and screwed down with brass crews but dont take my word for it im going to my saddle shop today ill find out more shortly
Cowboy316

RollingThunder · March 10, 2009, 12:00:33 PM

Depends on the model, I think. Make sure theirs is a No. 14.

cowboy316 · March 10, 2009, 01:04:41 PM

RT
i will i like lookin for old saddles just wish i could afford to rebuild them lol

Ill do what i can to help ya out
Cowboy316

RollingThunder · March 12, 2009, 02:07:09 PM

So ... it arrived!

As I figured it would be, it was in a box ... better than a bag I suppose. LOL.

When I opened the box, there was another box on top of my Meany. It was empty.

The box, I mean.

The box, being empty, was discarded. Maybe it was discard-board-ed. lol

A little piece of history peeked it's head up at me and said, "Howdy do!"

It was pretty gritty looking, and I wasn't sure if it was dirt, grime, age or red rot.

As advertised, it was missing a few things. Like it's original conchas and ties.

It's hard to tell in this picture, but the stitching has not broken the leather. Simply rotted out and come away from it. Better the stitching rot and fall away than for the leather to be torn.

On this one, you can see the horn better. Looks like the remnants of glue down at the bottom, and that horn is steel. I'll have to carefully clean it and polish it up before it gets re-wrapped in leather. Last thing I want to do is wrap it back up with rust inside.

I carefully took my finger and wiped some of the grime, seeing if it would carry any of the leather surface away with it. Nothing but grime. Looked like a mixture of dirt and fine sawdust. Not sure what was happening there, but so far, it looks like the leather has a smattering of hope left. You can see the checkerboard border a little better here. Careful restoration and cleanup, as well as a good re-sealing of the leather should have that looking spiffy in no time. Museum quality? Heck no. But my living room quality? Absolutely!

And here was the pleasant surprise. The seat was tooled. Hard to tell what is there, and it will never again look brand new, but the miles this seat must have seen over the years is pretty amazing.

Here's a little close up of it, with adjusted contrast, so you can see the tooling a little better. Yes, that is paint on the seat. No, I didn't do it.

cowboy316 · March 12, 2009, 04:43:06 PM

hey there RT here are 4 pics i took this morning of a 1890 FA Meanea high back A fork with the Sam Stag rigging the lady there said that her husband and there sone rebuilt it ant tree is an origanal Meanea and was in great shape so they restored it to what is was like new using all new leather and period hardware so i hope these pics will help ya bud

Marshal Will Wingam · March 12, 2009, 04:58:32 PM

This is truly exciting, RT. Now you have pics of another one for reference, thanks to Cowboy316. You even know what shape the wood on the horn needs to be. Now the fun begins.

Dalton Masterson · March 12, 2009, 08:38:02 PM

Very cool! I keep finding some saddles around in different shops, but they are all too high priced for what they are, or they are too nice to rip apart and put back together. Oh well, one of these days.

Nice find!
DM

RollingThunder · March 12, 2009, 09:32:52 PM

Thanks for the pics on that Cowboy! I appreciate it.

Well, I did the offside front jockey this evening. It took a great deal of time to get years and years and years of crust and crud off of it. The worst part was the fact that in the checkerboard, there was an excessive amount of built up gunge from years of oiling and getting dirty. So I got those cleaned out the best that I could.

The neat thing that you couldn't see before was that there was a wheeled rope border around the outside edge of the checkerboard. You couldn't see it elsewhere, but it was not as deep as the checkerboard was, and so I believe it was done with an embossing wheel.

I'll try to post pics in the morning. I'm pretty beat right now. My daughter shot pics of the cleanup process. I've let it dry for some time, and then oiled it with one coat of EVOO. Don't want to overdo it, so light coats are the order of the day. Overall the leather, while I am not flattening it and re-forming it during the rebuild, seems to be in good enough shape, but I don't want to take a chance and crack the fibers of the leather. So I'll snap a few of the jockey in the morning after the EVOO has had a chance to recondition the fibers of the leather a little.

So far, so good.

RollingThunder · March 13, 2009, 07:44:54 AM

Well, this morning it looked black as coal, matte in its finish and even in tone. So I took my jar of Blackrock (my secret weapon) and smeared some on it and massaged it into the surface of the leather. The Blackrock really helps the leather I have worked with to restore in the past. Once it sets in for 4-5 hours, you can buff it to a nice, soft gloss. More pics coming tonight.

RollingThunder · March 13, 2009, 06:50:34 PM

So. I decided to give the Meanea a name. I call it the Sow's Ear. Not sure I'll be able to make a silk purse out of it, but I'm gonna give it a shot. This update will be kinda long, so please bear with me.

I started with the off-side front jockey. It was pretty tough feeling, and I decided not to lay it flat under some wait to smash it back to shape, for fear of tearing the fibers. So I cleaned it best I could and left it formed the exact way it was removed from the saddle. The Sow's Ear may have some fly-aways, but better safe than sorry.

Here's the front and the back of what I started with. Paint, grime, and absolutely no love in recent days. This poor thing has seen many moons in happier times, and you can barely make out the checkerboard pattern. I had to look really close to see the rope, but if you look at the back of the left side of the first picture, at the top of the checkerboard, above the lined area, you can just make out where it's at.

The backside was a bit grimed up as well. When I was washing it and the front side, the dirt was just rooooolling off the leather into the scrub-bowl. NOTE -- I know for a fact it was dirt and not some leather rot because it ran off dark grey and eventually stopped with virtually no change in the surface of the leather.

And here is the Sow's Ear in the bath tub, getting a gentle scrub down. I came across areas that had oil/cleaner/whatever and dirt so gummed up on the surface of the leather it created a grey spot. These settled in on the checkerboard in a real PITA way. The checkerboard is three squares deep, and essentially, the "colored" squares have four score lines running through them to make it change in overall tone. Step back a few feet, and you have a distinct checkerboard pattern. Well, the score lines collected a plethora of grit, and grime, and after a while, I resorted to an old trick. I took a toothbrush and mashed the head of it until it was softer little bristles, firmer than a toothbrush. Then I gently rubbed away at the grime build up, very softly and carefully, until it finally was gone. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Patience got me through. Took a while.

Oh, the wash-mix was Murphy's oil soap cut in water.

Here, once it had dried for about an hour, I applied EVOO in two coats, front and back. Here's how it soaked all of this up. It was perdy thirsty, but after the bath, and the EVOO, the feel of the surface sorta resembled ... leather.

You can see the checks in the checkerboard better here.

And the rope boarder really is better here.

There are plenty of chewed up parts on this saddle, and they are pretty much everywhere. Hopefully, though, I can get this whole mess dialed in and folks won't much notice it.

After all of this, I smeared it with Blackrock on the surface, and let it sit all day. Came home, buffed it down to a mild gloss, and sealed it with a wax.

This is how it looks now. Please, be honest. Am I doing this saddle any favors?

You can see the shine here.

Most of the shine and return of the color comes from the Blackrock.

And here's a real good close up of the rope, the checkerboard and the overall boarder.

So far, any recommendations? Any thoughts?

cowboy316 · March 13, 2009, 07:27:37 PM

RT
as far as im concerened you should keep doing what your doing its lookin great cant wait to see the reat of the work
lookin good there my friend
Cowboy316

RollingThunder · March 13, 2009, 07:55:58 PM

Well, I also tooled on over to a copy of The Cheyenne Saddle from James Laird, and I double checked what was on David's site against the picture of Alex Kirkbride's Meanea 14X. The horns are the same as listed, but different than the Sam Stagg rigged Meanea your saddler has CW316.

You can see it here.

Hope David gets a chance to check on those patterns soon.

Take care all!

Marshal Will Wingam · March 13, 2009, 09:20:28 PM

You're making decent progress on that sadle, pard. It's certainly a beautiful one. It would be fun to buy one of the new trees and make a replica with all the same designs on it.

RollingThunder · March 14, 2009, 07:52:42 AM

Well, Marshal, as luck would have it, David Carrico does that exact thing. And the prices I saw on his website were amazingly good. Shoot, a new custom saddle by any well-known maker would run you between 4-7 grand, and David's stuff is well below that price tag, and built to last.

You should hit him up. I don't know if he'd sell it as a kit that you put together, but it'd be fun to show up on the trail or at the shoot sportin' one of them old fellas!

panhead pete · March 14, 2009, 08:14:09 AM

How Do R.T.,

Thanks for posting the pictures and providing so much detail. I enjoy the history as much or more than the shooting aspects of our sport. It is awesome to see progress on a piece of history and artwork! Is it worth it? For history geeks like me it SURELY is!!

Thanks again,

PhP

HorsePen Henry · March 14, 2009, 07:33:54 PM

RT,

Thanks for the update on the "Sow's Ear".
She is looking a whole lot better in my opinion.

Horse Pen

RollingThunder · March 17, 2009, 07:13:51 AM

OK. So here's the rear seat jockeys. All in all, they didn't turn out bad, but you can see the amount of damage done by the neglect they suffered over the years. Lesson learned here? Take better care of your saddle! Even the best leather rots and cracks.

Onside front jockey ... look closely and you can see tiny paint flecks.

Here you can see the lacing. Relatively newer, it was still in poor condition, and had to be removed to separate the two jockey pieces for cleaning.

And here's the first one in for a bath ...

More coming! ...

RollingThunder · March 17, 2009, 07:19:27 AM

Here's a closeup prior to the bath and the scrubbing it needed. Ugh ... nasty, dry, glazed over.

After dunking the leather in a mix of Muprhy's Oil Soap and hot water for a good soak, this is what comes to the surface out of the leather. This greyish gunk comes off with a good scrubbing, and opens up the leather to accept the next step, a few good coats front and back of Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Clean versus unclean ...

And both clean, having been oiled with EVOO, covered with a light smear of Blackrock and then lightly sealed and buffed.

Next ... the fork cover leather.