Jeremiah Watt

4952 cuts later,

What comes after 4952 cuts you ask, well a set of conchos and a pair of stirrup bolts for a quite nice Watt Bros. Stock Saddle, that is what you get. We are building the saddle to take to a Show in the not far off future, and I wanted to do something just a little different and I choose the traditional Spinich ….er, oops Spanish Mission window style as my opening shape.
The windows are a mix of round and square placed together, creating what may seem like a 4 point Star, with scalloped edges and a square viewing pane at the center. It’s a “Way Cool” shape as we say out west by the bunkhouses on every ranch when Dad ain’t close enough to hear us.

I choose to cut a border around the squares of each Concho, and a central flower much like is done on a fine shotgun from Italy………….sorry you Italians if ya happen to be reading, hope I don’t insult any real engravers out there. The work I see being done on guns these days is just mind boggling, this is my version. And even if I done my best to copy it exactly, it still looks like crayon work next to their work.

The two stirrup bolts, since they have a closed top dome, then they need a fuller pattern, this the floral rosette cutting form. The string concho’s are slotted, so we laid a wreath of leaves around the edge of the dome and made all the rest the very same as the first two Rossette concho’s

It takes me about 1 hour and 15 minutes to cut the string conchos and about 1 hour and 30 minutes to cut the rosette type. That plus the cost of silver these days, makes this set of conchos rather expensive. I laid this entire design out on the computer, built all the arcs and what not into the design on the computer, then printed that out in a sheet and stuck it to the pre-polished silver sheet. It made it all go quite cleanly, and helped keep things real strait.

I will oxidize the entire set, the set consists of the string conchos, the stirrup bolts and a rather unique horncap. The horn cap is very different, I made a deep domed cap and then depressed a central area within the cap. Into that depression I then placed Oak leaves and acorns that I had cut out, these are silver soldered down into the depressed are which will leave the design below the surface so as to not interfere when a person is roping and dallying over the horn cap later. At least that was my intention behind the design. I will oxidize the area behind the Oak & Acorn rather heavily, the Oak them will carry nicely with the Oak & Acorn that is being carved in the leather.

I don’t think I want to go thru the labor of counting cuts on the 4.5 inch horn cap, so I will stick with the simplicity of 4952 cuts later and you can have the same thing for your next saddle………minus the horn cap.

The horn cap turned out cool enough but “boy howdy was it a ton of work. Not sure I can get paid for it, it took me 17 hours of sitting engraving to finalize just the engraving and shaping on the horn cap, that time has nothing to do with all the oxidizing and rubbing the excess off. Anyways the cap has three Oak leaves and some twigs and acorns on the top which are entirely modeled, nothing is cut away, it is all simply pushed around until it takes on a very 3 dimensional shape. All totaled the modeling of the central portion took me a little over 7 hours of rubbing, hammering, and yes some times cussing under by breath that I was stupid enough to start into a project like this right now.

But I worked away, getting coffee once in a while just to give my butt a break and my eyes a rest. Once the modeling was done I spent some time sharpening my stipple point, and pecking away on that background area, behind those oak leaves. Those big silver shiny round things that are in amongst the Oak&Acorn pattern, those shiny beads you are asking your wife about since she knows all about things that grow in a garden, well…………………….those are Oak Balls.

I quit at about 11 pm and headed into the house to look at what happend on the stock market for the day, and to work on a page for my blog. I was up and engraving by 7am, and at first light every thing was looking pretty cool, the center was done, the back ground work finished, and it was framed in nicely, I had done my outside perimeter border and had laid out my floral work and done the outline of each scroll and the bright cut groups. Ah, I was fresh, relaxed with coffee in hand and ready to get at it all over again. By about 10 I had done my liner work, and the shading on my cross overs, as well as shading at those places where scrolls exit from under flowers. All I had left where the flowers, I wanted to make all the flowers of the relieved type, which takes me considerable more time, but hey it was sort of an Art Piece so it was all worth it. Dang, Dang, double dang, its already 2pm, and I am just wrapping up the last flower center.

I am sitting there feeling pretty good about the horn cap as a whole, but knowing full well that I could have done 3 of my usual horn caps in the time I had spent on this version. Worst part of it all, I know I will never get paid what I should for sitting all those hours pecking away at that silver, cool as it may be, I just don’t think that many folks including me up until yesterday can really appreciate all the time it can take to complete a piece of work such as this.
And now for the rest of the story. I will know very well from first hand experience just what I am up against when I get asked for something very unique. I won’t shy away from the chance to do the job, I will just have a much sharper and more experienced pencil in hand when it comes to pricing the job.

Hey, glad your out there……

Good night and God Bless