Because double bridle means also double bit; having two separate bits in the horse's mouth at same time, I was in trouble with my modeller life. Nothing serious actually - I simply had no idea how to combine two bits to the technique I already have invented to make bits literally working on mouthless horses. One mouthpiece fits there just well enough, but another one isn't an option! So how to fix that? I got few ideas to try, failed and had to invent more.
The final product is... Well, a curb-snaffle -combination assembled from FOUR moving metal pieces that are attached to each other. It goes this way: mouthpiece-curb-link-snafflering. Jeep. That is it. Though it's yet a trouble. The link disturbs everything, but at the same time, the snaffle could drop away without it... And the main problem with that stupid link is that it seemingly is disagreeing with a curb strap when I add one to the curb. Grrrr.
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| Bad photo of the bit combo, but I don't have anything else right now. |
(Edit; february 2019. A photo of the double bit who is the star of this article:)
Otherwise, it seems to work nicely enough. Big part of this is how the bridle is made. Strong but soft enough leather with tongue buckles is a perfect thing, but may be difficult to keep good looking as the straps and buckles require more space than it really should. To make thinner strapped bridle, I have to use very narrow and almost paper thin thinned leather lace... With sliding buckles. Yay! NO. After accustoming to how nice tongue buckles are, I've realised how horrific slideys actually are. I can say I hate them most of my time. They also look boring, so... The only big plus is that you can have a buckle and the keeper in the same, but that's just... all of the good.
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| This is the same leather what I used for the star of this article. |
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| Older bridle from that leather. |
But anyway. I made a double bridle from that super thin(ned) leather. It has all parts we need for English doublie: browband, throatlatch, three crownpieces, five cheekpieces (one for noseband), noseband with a flash noseband attachment, a flash noseband, and... The bits and a curb strap. Most of my time with that bridle I've just fought with piling the crownpieces nicely on each other behind the horse's ears (very yummy to do with fragile paper-like leather...), and adjusting the cheekpieces so the bits could work nicely and no air could be found between them and the horse. SO MUCH EASIER TO SAY THAN DO... People. Rly. Don't do paper thin leather and sliding buckles. It's very irritating.
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| Sometimes I find my worktable a good photography place. Weird, but yes. |
The dressage bridle's cheekpieces have some metal parts recycled from four similar cheekpieces I had to destroy after realising how bad buckles were in them. That leather can't be saved after it's glued, so I just got the metal pieces and threw leathers away. It was really nice to have some parts already made...
...but I still had to make sure I have enough buckles for second projects. The buckles are shaped like the number 8 and are really small, in fact they're perfect for that stupid leather I used. At the same time I made some mini jumprings and some other pieces. Because, as you see, a double bridle gets a lot of those (and the jumprings get re-shaped to ovals!)...
I must mention how much I like the "used" look in the straps after they've wrinkled by rough handling... Which is needed, unfortunately.
I seemingly made seven curbstraps from that stupid leather after finishing the bridle. It was pain still.
As you possibly got already sure of, I lost nerves with that bridle. Every time I use that leather I just think why the hell I even try. Yet less nice as I realised I had to redo about half of that whole damn stack of straps (after snapping some straps because they were too thick to go through the buckles... and because the throatlatch was too short). It's not worth all that pain. Or is it?
Actually, I had to get a pause from that bridle project as I didn't know how to survive with it anymore. At some point I then had two bridles to work on... I have no idea how. The first was that stupid dressage trash bridle and the other was just... random. So random, that I ended up making an another, average bridle from it. The reason to change straps was that they were often too short for the Salinero mold, as he's not the smallest horse in my shelf. Also this other bridle had to use a browband that I tried to pad with red suede lace, which didn't work, so it looks unclean now. Not sure if I retouch it later.
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| That average bridle in use... Seems to be the best way to take good photos of my tack. |
The good part is, that too short straps can still fit smaller heads, so I have different bridles for different horses. Even although I have made my tack recipes mainly for warmblood size. This bridle can work as a 'lesson bridle', meaning that it's simple enough for riding school students to use - my modelverse's main stable has an ideology not to put beginners to use double reins. And with good horses you really should not need anything else than simpliness.
With these I again thought how nice it could be to have a normal instant-splattable glue to use. Contact glue is a bit difficult and irritating to do just for small bits that should be done in a second. It also makes impossible to add paddings properly, what comes to nosebands and browbands. Padding adds so much nice detail that I really wish to do that more to my bridles.
So I guess it took a couple of days to finish that double bridle. I still hate the leather, but at least I now have the bridle... And double bits.
I hate being compliment for myself, but I have to say, this is quite something I never believed I could make. Yes, it's just a bridle... But model horse tackmakers know how easy it is (not) to do a mini bridle that looks and works as realistically as possible, when compared to the 1:1 scale thing. This simply is something I wasn't thinking to do when I first started tackmaking in 2013, ever. Maybe it's the straps' narrowness and the detailing that makes me say that this is quite OK bridle for my personal view now (even without tongue buckles). Still has a lot to improve yet, of course. Like, putting this on any model is a painful experience... Who knows if the second similar project just misbehaves too much to get done at all? (I really felt stupid when writing this part of the article. Really. So much I hate being kind to myself. And that is not a joke. OK: to be honest I just didn't list all the errors this irritatingly fragile bridle has...)
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| And as my quite new saying goes, everything looks good with a |
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| Flash noseband attachment... And no, this bridle doesn't look that dirty out of photos. |
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| I wonder if the throatlatch is yet a bit too short... |
What's very weird is that I really need these irritating projects. It keeps my brain busy. It's good for health. A simple bridle (browband, cheekpieces and a throatlatch) with three tongue buckles seems to be already too simple for me.
...must make more double bridles. Though not from that idiotic leather. Pffff.
Or maybe yes.
