Saddler calls it a day

Jim Burns at the sewing machine in his workshop at Wingatui.
Jim Burns at the sewing machine in his workshop at Wingatui.
Wingatui man Jim Burns has retired from a half-century of full-time saddle-making.
Wingatui man Jim Burns has retired from a half-century of full-time saddle-making.
Wingatui saddlemaker Jim Burns retired at Christmas after 50 years making saddles and other...
Wingatui saddlemaker Jim Burns retired at Christmas after 50 years making saddles and other equestrian gear. Photos by Peter McIntosh.

Wingatui saddler Jim Burns is stepping back from a career which has brought him plenty of joy over the past 50 years.

Matt Smith talks to the saddler about e changes in the craft, the future of equine gear, and how he will miss creating something from scratch.

Epiphanies can come in many forms.

But all Jim Burns had to do to figure out his career path for the next 50 years was look down at the horse he was riding as a teenager in South Canterbury in the 1960s.

Burns (67) had been in the business of making saddles for just on 50 years before he finally hung up his tools of the trade at Christmas.

But if it wasn't for a chance remark from one of his mates as they rode back from Phar Lap Raceway in the early 1960s, the affable Burns might never have considered a saddlery career.

‘‘I was riding home from the track and someone said, ‘Did you see they're advertising for an apprentice saddler in Waimate?','' Burns says during a conversation in his well-organised workshop.

‘‘I'm looking down at the saddle while I'm riding and thought, ‘I wouldn't mind having a go at making one of these things one day'.''

Burns knew his time in the saddle on race days would be short - if at all. His lanky frame was always going to carry too much weight to make a regular living from riding, although he had a few goes over the steeplechase fences.

So a chat with saddler Ron Thomson, who was based at Washdyke, seemed the obvious option.

‘‘He said, ‘If you're keen enough, we'll have a go here'.''This all sounded good to a young lad with a love of horses and an interest in creating something by hand.

But his five-year apprenticeship, comprising 10,000 hours of work, was slightly less glamorous at first.

‘‘For the first two years of my apprenticeship, all I was allowed to do was repair horse covers. I wasn't allowed to touch a horse saddle,'' Burns says.

‘‘After a couple of years, I'd go like hell and get all the covers repaired, ready to start and work on a saddle, then someone would walk through the door with a great big pile of covers so I'd be back in the corner again.''

Saddles, covers, bridles and girths were one thing, but homes away from homes for camping fans were another.

‘‘They had an equestrian side but also a canvas side. We got into making tents and awnings, but I hated that.

‘‘I had an inkling for the equestrian side of that and the racing side of it came after it.''

Burns continued working in Timaru before a visit to Wingatui convinced him and his wife, Shirley, to move south in the early 1970s.

They have never looked back, operating stores in several locations in Mosgiel before setting up a workshop at home 10 years ago.

The world of online retailing and parallel importing was a long way away when Burns first started out cutting, stitching and soaking everything by hand.

‘‘Everything we made ourselves and it was the same when I started off in business,'' he says.

‘‘If you wanted a halter, you made the halter; if you wanted a bridle, you made the bridle. Now, everything's mass-produced and you buy them from wholesalers and resell them.''

For example, girths - which wrap around a horse's midriff to keep the saddle on - have gone from an ordinary cotton woven girth to all-elastic, but the big change has been in the saddle itself.

Wooden ‘‘trees'', which make up the frame of the saddle, were the staple of any good one for 300 years until the early 1980s, when a Perth saddlery set about revolutionising the saddle.

''They put a plastic tree in the saddle and people said, ‘You can't have a plastic tree in a saddle'.

‘‘They had a few flops for a start. They originally started with fibreglass but it was too rigid and wouldn't flex.

''They went to the plastic trees and I reckon in all seriousness, it's the greatest thing that has ever been put into a saddle, whether it be a race saddle or an equestrian saddle. Now, they're making us obsolete.''

Burns used to restuff 50 or 60 saddles a year, until air cushioning panels were introduced.‘‘Now we'd be lucky if we would stuff a dozen.''In fact, Burns hasn't made a saddle from scratch since 2005, something he is sad about.

‘‘It's a sense of satisfaction making a saddle here,'' he says, looking around his workshop.‘‘I used to love making them. When we were into it in a bigger way, we were probably making one every three or four days, but we were supplying different outlets throughout New Zealand.

‘‘If you had everything and you got a good go at it, for an exercise saddle you're looking at a day and a-half. For a wee race saddle, you would knock out one of them in six hours.''

Race jockeys need a much lighter saddle as they battle to stay within the tight weight restrictions for thoroughbred racing in New Zealand, and use a lighter-cut leather.

‘‘ ‘With your exercise saddles that are made out of a heavier leather, you have to soak all that and pull them around the actual tree of the saddle when they're wet and let them dry out and tack from there.‘It's a bigger saddle, it's bigger-panelled and [for] probably a bigger rider, too. A race saddle is only there to hold the stirrups up and that's it.''

Along with saddles, girths, bridles and halters, Burns has made and repaired covers over the years - mainly as a service to regular clients - but his main passion is the saddle.

‘‘The stupid part about it is that even after being a saddler for 50 years, I still enjoy working on saddles,'' he laughs.

‘‘That's crazy for doing something that long. You can see a sense of satisfaction if you get a saddle that is badly damaged or broken and you can put it back to what it was like. It's a bit like a panelbeater getting a dint out of a car.

‘‘You'll sometimes look and see horses that are running around with your bridles on and you think, ‘I made that'.

‘‘We've met some absolutely fabulous people and some really good friends. And I've met some characters, some absolute characters.''

His hips are not what they used to be, but Burns does not intend to sit completely still in retirement. He is determined to keep riding his sole racehorse, Whatwasthat, in work.

‘‘I'm 67 now, and I've been getting paid by John Key for two years and it's the first regular wage I've had,'' he says.

‘‘I want to muck around with my horses while I'm still able to ride them. Instead of getting out of bed in the morning at half past five or quarter to six, I'll have half an hour longer.''

He and Shirley have enjoyed their time in racing, even as the saddlery has come under pressure from online retailers, just like any other shop on the high street.‘‘You just grin and bear it and that's part of business.

‘‘Having said that, the first 10 years were the most pleasurable thing you could imagine, the next 10 years were OK, the third 10 years in the shop were a bit more difficult because there was someone around the corner trying to knock you down.

''But that's just a fact of business. You just get hardened to it.''

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