Building a saddle stand without a saddle

RMC Woodworking just finished a project, which is always exciting! We love seeing our pieces go to someone who will love them for years to come.

This one was a first for us though. New things don’t scare us. In fact, new things are what we want to do most. We can and will build a thousand of something, but that doesn’t excite us. So when a customer came to us asking us to build a saddle stand, we were both intrigued and daunted. We have been around horses in our lives and we know from those experiences that Saddle care is a complex and deep topic. Entire books have been written on how to care for saddles.

So when someone came to us, trusting us to build something to hold one of their best saddles, we were humbled. This project began with research, unfortunately there isn’t all that much saddle stand building information out there but we were able to find the right information.

We built this Saddle stand using the dimension that were able to find, and work out with the customer. We also had a personal goal of building this saddle stand using no modern fasteners. And we did it!

This saddle stand is built using only wooden joinery. The “spine” as we called it is a bridle joint (pun absolutely intended), and the “ribs” are a joint that I’m not sure if it has a name. They are inset slightly into the front and back, with dowel pins used to secure them. The shelf on the bottom is mortise and tenon, and the shelf bottom is just a simple dado into the shelf sides.

The Saddle stand is made from Sapele, our favorite wood to work with. Except for the shelf bottom which is yellow pine. All of it was built from 4/4 stock purchased at Exotic Lumber in Annapolis, Maryland.

The laser engraving on the front was made with our Laguna 150w CO2 laser. We had a difficult time getting this design to something we were happy with, but we got there in the end. We used 400mm/sec speed, 20% laser power, and a single pass on it before we finished it. We finished it with Osmo Wood Wax satin finish, after sanding it down to 120grit.

Overall a fun project, and one that will definitely last for many many years to come.