Cleaning Horse Saddles

Video Transcript

"Keeping your equipment in good working order, is not only important for the overall appearance of your saddles, they're expensive items, worthy of your care and attention, but it's also important to the longevity and safety, good working parts will ensure that you're not going to have a mishap, that may cost you an accident. I like to start with a product that’s going to be good for the cleaning, and preservation of the saddle. There are many products out there. This one is a common standard, that's been around for a long time. I'm not opposed to also using a simple solution, which would be your Murphy's Oil Soap. The thing about most of these products is you want to just take a little extra care, and be sure you don't saturate or soak the stitching. It's not uncommon for stitching to rot and erode, because we've overused our cleaning products, so if we can take care, to keep the cleaning product on the bigger part of the leather, then use your cloth to get in, and near the stitching. You can go around and be pretty careful. It's not unusual for me, to also incorporate the use of a soft toothbrush. Save those old toothbrushes. They're great for getting into the small cracks and crevices. After we've gone over our saddles with a good cleaning product, we can then top it off with a standard oil, we call Neet's Foot Oil. I pour mine into a separate cup, when I've got this large of a bottle, because I promise you, it's going to get toppled over at some point, so putting just enough in a small cup, saving my cloth, so that the oil cloth is always available for that. I can put just the right amount, dipped into the cup, and place it right here, on those leather parts. Again, I'm taking care that I don't saturate the stitching, because that's going to become a problem down the road. If we have a lot of basket weave, and it's hard to get down into those cracks, I'll even use a small, soft paint brush. It works very well to he help really oil and saturate some of the more distressed leather, that's taken a rough time over the years. Sun is extremely damaging to your saddle. You always want to be sure and take care, whenever possible, that you cover that leather, if it's going to be kept out in the environment. We can always then continue, and finish up with a good silver polish, polishing up that silver to a high shine."