More Horsey Things

As you may have figured out, I have never quite outgrown the adolescent girl - horse thing, emphasis on draft horses. Sometimes it manifests as wanting to make harness/tack, particularly for draft horses. Lately it's cavalry equipment.

As an aside, it may be partly my grandfather's fault. He always wanted a Morgan horse, and Morgans were, IIRC, preferred by the cavalry.

Poking around Sunday evening I found a website that includes an "American Cavalry Blueprint Library", which I spent a chunk of yesterday downloading TIF files from. The images are scans of plans on paper, and range in quality.

There's one plan sheet, for a set of what are referred to as cantle bags, that I think are edging out the saddlebags in terms of actually getting made. These cantle bags are designed to unbuckle from the saddle/bits holding them to the saddle, so that the user could buckle on a shoulder strap and use it as a satchel-like bag. At the moment I don't have any pictures I can post (without doing violence to IP rights), but I may be ably to pry a picture of them out of a public-domain PDF tonight. It's a fun plan set, there's insane amounts of information to make a set, including canvas liners, all neatly packed onto one sheet. Robin turned funny colors when I showed him, especially when I pointed out it was all hand-drawn. Snerk.