Skive, skive, skive.

There is lace all over my desk at the moment. Here's just a snippet of some, drying after an application of gum trag.



I spent last night reading through the WEG Diorama Project article in JAH, courtesy of Jennifer Buxton's post.  By the end of it, I was so inspired to start on my harness orders that I think I dreamt about harnesses...

Dan was online last night so we spent a few moments comparing measurements between my four tack models (Smarty Jones, Ideal, Lady Phase and Lonesome Glory) and her Eberl Ricardo resin, whom the set will be for. She determined that Ricky is about 2cm bigger in all measurements than Smarty, so I will be roughly building the harness on him - with measurements for back-up, of course!

Since I have made a couple of classic harnesses based on the Zlico ZGB harness, that's what I'll be using again. It's a nice multi-purpose harness designed by George Bowman, one of the world's top drivers. It can be switched from single to full with a few additions, and is nice enough to use for dressage and cones, but strong enough for marathon. So if Dan decides to enter Ricky into marathon as well, all she needs to do is switch out the cart. Easy!

I've ordered my bits from TWMHC, along with some racing stirrups (before they sell out again) and hames for Lisa's collar harness. They'll get here in about a week to a week and a half, but in the meantime I have plenty of prep-work to do. There's lace to skive and treat, as mentioned above, and I also need to experiment with a tongue-buckle bridle. There isn't much point in doing a slip-buckle bridle with a tongue-buckle harness!

I am lucky with the ZGB harness though. This is the bridle:

See on the crownpiece how there are extra layers on the poll? And remember how I have whined about 4.5mm lace being too wide for RR's buckles? Now I have a solution (for this harness at least)! I can just attach two 2mm strips of lace side by side onto another layer, thus resulting in a bridle with 2mm straps that fit through the buckles. Yay! Obviously this method won't work on regular bridles, so I still need to find some 3.5mm or 4mm lace for that, but for harnesses I shouldn't have any trouble with this. Lovely!