From video: Hi, my name is Adrian Hendricks and I’m a saddle maker here in Eagle, Idaho. The other day I had a really good question from one of my clients. They asked when I’m out doing a fitting, “why do I always drop the panels on my saddles when I go to make a flocking adjustment?” I said, “You know that’s a great question,” so I thought I’d just help explain it. So the reason I dropped the panels is because normally when the saddle is laced and I have to make a flocking adjustment I have to reach up under the panel, under the flap, and find the flocking ports which are little slits in the panel. Then I have to use one of my various implements to adjust the flocking, and as you can see I’m not afraid to bend my flocking irons but I’m really limited at where I can reach within the saddle. It’s kind of like if you have a cast on and you have to scratch an itch and use a ruler okay you can reach but you can’t quite get all the way down there, and sometimes in the process of reaching down there you upset some of the other flocking. So what can happen is I can create lumps under the saddle and even more importantly what happens if I need to reach the front of the saddle, which quite often I do, I might fill down the legs, or I have to make some changes in the very back the flocking port on this saddle is right there and so it’s really hard to reach with my metal flocking iron just to get exactly where I need to and usually I like to build more of a wall, or soften or do something back here. The other thing is I don’t really like to cut holes in my panels. This is all under pressure. The more holes that are cut, or more flocking ports that are cut, actually weakens your panel. So if possible I like to avoid cutting a hole in the panel and you can quite often tell because the flocking ports that have been cut you can see have been cut just right along there and I really like to avoid doing that so it’s easier for me is I just take the panels apart. These I’ve already kind of taken apart for you and then by just taking the whole panel off foreign I’ve got greater ability to be able to reach wherever I want within the saddle and for me I can do a much better job because I can make sure it’s even I can double check I can feel are there any gaps just for me I can do a much better job and that’s what really counts for me is how can I make your horse more comfortable and do the best job possible so in a nutshell that’s why I’m quite frequently dropping the panels on a saddle yes if I can reach something these blocking ports are right here and right here and right here these were made by the factory if I can easily reach these and accomplish what I need to happy to do it but most often I need to reach a lot more area on the panel and I can just do a much better job when I drop the panels. Thanks for asking.
via YouTube Transcript (YouTube converted to text, so not necessarily punctually and grammatically correct, some minor edits have been made)
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