Tack gallery - traditional

TRADITIONAL SCALE TACK
This is the scale I want to show most. I am happy that I can todays have more good (well, just better, not good) tack than bad, and I lack storage space for these - almost a dream! I've also made trad tack for my hobbyist friend, and will show them here too, but not yet before the tack isn't in their hands.

Page updated:
- 29/10/19: More photos added; one for the ropes and a pile for the halters
- 1/1/20: One halter added, as well as saddles with improved design.  
- 11/3/20: Saddles got their very own page.

Old bridle, new horse.

I do tack - no matter what scale - mostly to add some realism and interest to my photography, but it's not all. It needs to work well enough alone too. Another thing to say is that as a kid I always wanted good, working and really fitting and/or adjustable tack for my horses, and it has been possible only form the moment I became a tackmaker in 2013 when I was already a student... So now I make the stuff I could have wanted to have for my horses in my childhood.

All buckles do work, all bits are removable, all bridles can be pulled apart like the real things do. Though, beware of a tackmaker that fully lacks real horse life and thus has almost no practical touch to horse tack. But when I see horses and tack, I scrutinize and possibly photograph it as well as I can.

Some things I decide to do "wrongly" just because I feel better to. Or then it is a habit I want to keep as my way to be different, or whatever else. I don't do perfect replicas of anything, I just want to know how a piece does work and then redo it in miniature, sometimes based on my sketches. I can say model horse stuff really teaches about real tack if made to work believably.

I have separate pages for BRIDLES and REINS and yet for BITS. Also SADDLES are on their own page. Then there's a page for OLD TACK.

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Ropes:

Ropes are, well, ropes, and one of the oldest pieces of tack I have made. Despite of their simpliness I have had a huge improvement with these as well. One of my favorite things are the chain ropes, which never existed when I played with toy horses as a kid. They would have been a big thing for a child who was more after realism than what the toy factories thought. 

Some kind of show rope? With chain.

That chain can be removed. And from this kind of photos I can see how much I need to improve yet...

White braided rope with chain and hook. This one went for my hobby friend Kave!

Braided rope with thicker brown and some yellow sewing thread.

Yarn, same what people mostly use for knitting.

The hook and rings of a satin lace rope. October 2019. I noticed that when there's one (oval) jumpring between the D-ring and the hook, the rope stays on the halter better.

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Halters:

I am fully aware of the fact that most of my halters, even when I say they fit nicely, are actually very loose especially on the noseband. In real world stable halters are not snugly fit, and I want to represent that with my model halters as well - I don't make other types of halters, if not very occasionally. The halters still stay on nicely, the only weird thing is definitely the noseband which is really really loose for some models. I can fix that easily if I want to, but I no way want to make any halter fit too snugly.

My first traditional scale halter, made from some lace, 2013. The most left photo shows it with 'ring buckles' before I changed them to the staple buckles.

Second halter, same lace in blue color. 2013. Belongs to Spilli; even before he was finished.

My first halter that I made form self-cut leather lace. 2014. Got retouched at 2017 I guess, as I added a tongue buckle to ease its use.

Loose halter made from chain and suede lace. 2014 I guess.

Random halter from... well, some lace my mother gave to me to use for tackmaking. It has tongue buckles but the material doesn't like much bending. 2016.

Knitting yarn halters with various (chain or leather) crownpieces. The way to make these is my own since I can't understand the actual rope halter tutorials. 2016.

A loose leather halter made from darker red leather at 2014... This was nice, but is of course very outdated now. I have no idea why I left that much extra strap ends to my tack back then.

A black leather halter made for Remu (that horsie posing in several older pictures). 2014. This halter no longer exists as I had to recycle it for projects that ask that awesome leather (I can't get more of it...).

Colorful but boring lace halters that are clumsy and impossible to use for tongue buckles. 2017.

Extremely thinned leather halter. Soft and fragile, but hangs nicely. 2016.

A blue halter with extremely thin leather and narrow straps; my first of that type. Also my first with tongue buckles (at least that small). A very loose but nice piece of tack. 2016.

I remade that dark red halter that had too long straps. Both are pack halters (meant to use for pack harnessed horses), so they must be easy to put on with bridles, hence the buckled noseband. 2017.

A halter I made for a tutorial in 2017. Maybe one of the best halters I have; they rarely happen to become interesting anymore, as I already know how to make a fitting one.

Raaste's personal halter made from scrap leather. 2017.

A scrap leather halter made for my hackney, Symppy. 2017.

Lace halters I made for Kave... 2017. She got some better ones too, no worries.

Three leather halters I made for Kave. 2017.

Bought some new lace that turned out to be okay for punching holes! Yay. 2018. This one's a bit too low, but is still nice as long as it's loose enough.

Same lace as above, now in lime green. This one is loose and fits Rollo so well that he got it for himself personally. 2018.

A pink halter with chocolate brown metal pieces. Fits smaller heads (which Brunello does not have). 2018.

Another shorter halter from that nice lace. 2018.

Later in 2018 I tried to find new ways to make halters that could really go as I want them to; and got this one with too loose noseband.

Scrap lace halter that fits Dreamy too well, so it became his own. 2018.

Made this pink stack at 2018 just so I can write it's measurements up to modify and re-use them later (I made a new recipe). It lacks throatlatch hooks on purpose. 

Second halter made for the new recipe (like the previous one), but now with at least one hook. (I'm not a fan of pink color, but pink tack always turns out better than anything else... I have no idea why.)

After the new recipe, I finally mass-produced few lace halters for Kave and their horses. The one on Valegro was made to be 'personal' for their individual of the same model.

When you try to make a small pony halter and it ends up fitting only foal... 2018. Stiff lace on the noseband doesn't help.

Same materials as with the earlier one with overloose noseband, but... Made with the new recipe, so. 2018.

Scrap leather halter. Large rings because I didn't bother to fight with how thick or wide the lace sometimes is. 2018.

A lace halter with leather crownpiece. 2019. This became the personal halter for Lanttu.

A red lace halter with leather crownpiece, 2019. I adjusted it as loose as possible to have it stay on just and just. And imagine, that lace doesn't hang nicely at all, it's way too stiff for that kind of purposes.

A random halter with too long crownstrap. 2019. This fits the drafts as well...

Another lace halter... 2019. These definitely don't look that nice when adjusted too loosely. There's a recycled leather padding in the noseband.

"Loosemoss", a moss green leather halter which is really really loose and also large. I like it. 2019.

A random scrap leather halter, 2019. I decided it can belong to Tilda, despite being ridiculously large for her.

A stable halter made from brown leather lace's flesh side, number one. 2019. Nicely loose and durable enough.

A stable halter made from brown leather lace's flesh side, number two. 2019 Reizvoll adopted it.

A stable halter made from brown leather lace's flesh side, number three. 2019. Decided to make the connector strap entirely from wire this time.

"Loosemoss large", alias yet bigger version of the similar halter listed earlier. 2019. It STILL stays on when put for a small horse (that iberian mare there), but could probably work best for drafts.

Blue leather halter with reflectors in it. 2019. This was made with the recipe I use most of the time anyway, and still it ended up fitting ponies and small horses better than warmbloods overall. Maybe that is because of how stiff and thick the leather is.

Similar as previously shown, but not the same. 2019.

A white satin lace halter. October 2019. This was a test piece since I had never made a satin lace halter before (if we don't count the black and white one I once made from recycled satin lace at 2016). Tested some techniques for those three-slot rings...

Second test piece with satin lace, this time in red (the shop didn't have any other colors) and with a different three-slot ring design. October 2019. I test-fitted the halter on Okay, and it definitely fits him too well, so he can keep it.

A stable halter made from black leather lace's flesh side. October 2019.

A stable halter from black leather lace's flesh side, with gold toned metal parts. October 2019.

An extremely loose halter that I made for Namu, to be her personal. Yes - it's too loose for her, I see. That's on purpose. The buckle has a moving tongue in it and a rectangular keeper.

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Harness:

I haven't made much harnesses due to the lack of finished carriages for my horses to draw and also because I simply don't have space to photograph that kind of things. And nowhere is shown how the harness actually attaches to the carriage, which is a thing I wish to know (so I would try to make that attachment system into the carriage I own). 

Second try at traditional scale carrying/pack harness I've designed. Hope this works better than the old... At least it fits warmbloods. In fact I needed to make special straps for just larger horses, practically because that finnhorse in the photo is too huge for all average tack I do. The halter that belongs to the set didn't go for him, so...

I'm amused of the fact that some modellers like skijoring as a theme for performance showing. I decided that my dolls need something similar, but a bit modified, so at the summer 2018 I made 'simple' harness for fun uses like skijoring, ski-riding and all really stupid ideas my dolls can get in their heads. Now I'm planning if I can add some possibility to attach working carriage to this harness as it seems to be the first traditional scale harness I can't hate. Also, my first check ever in any scale. I have no idea of how it really is made. (The bridle seen in the photo is not a part of the set.)

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Other:

Martingals, cruppers, lunging sets, neckropes, etc. Everything which doesn't drop to the other categories or what I haven't made more than a couple of pieces.  

Orange leather martingal.

Dark blue/grey martingal.

Blue lunging set.

More tack is coming when time flies.