An uneven or lumpy saddle panel can prevent your horse from giving of its best and can result in back trouble for your horse.  As the old flock material becomes hard, it forms small lumps and unevenness, these cause pressure points and maybe even sores on your horses back.  To get your horse sound again will mean an enforced period of rest and treatment.

What does it involve?

Reflocking a saddle involves total replacement of the contents of the panels with new flock. Ideally this should be carried out at least every two years.

Here at Hawks House Saddlery we use white wool, although more expensive than the other brown and grey flock material, the white flock is 100% wool of the best quality.  This means that the white flock can absorb more sweat and oils from the horse; this is what shapes the saddle panels to your horses back.  The white flock has longer fibres; this creates good compression and ability to spring back into shape.  Brown and grey flock is usually discarded carpet factory waste, it is not 100% wool and contains a proportion of acrylic fibres.  These do not absorb sweat and oils as readily and lumps and unevenness occur more quickly.

We typically need the saddle for 1 full working day to reflock it.  When you bring the saddle in we will carry out a check to ensure the saddle is sound.  We will check stitching, particularly on girth straps, leather strength and general wear points.  After this we split the saddle in half, remove all the old flocking and replace with white flock.

We ask that you ideally ride without a numnah.  This achieves two things

·                It allows sweat and oils to get to work on the flock without the numnah absorbing all the sweat and creating a barrier.

·              It allows us to see the evenness of the grease marks to gauge saddle fit.

After 20 hours riding, the saddle is brought back to us.  We then make any minor adjustments to the flock

Prices

Reflocking                                                         -           £40

Reflocking with visit for saddle fitting advice          -           £50 (mileage is extra)

Mileage currently calculated at 35p per mile (on multimap directions from SY13 2QH)