How To--bridle measurements

The marathon harness is done--hooray! It's all boxed up and ready to go. I returned the cutter to the unpainted resin shelf in the basement, and he ended up next to my Bogucki Chances Are. Looking at them together, I couldn't help but notice how much bigger the cutter's head is. Both these molds are considered "Traditional Scale", but you would be hard pressed to find any bridle they could both wear. This happens a lot. Saddles are relatively universal, but bridles can be a lot trickier to fit properly.I own a lot of models, but I can't own them all. Nearly half my tack orders are made from measurements. This is a bit harder than having the actual horse to build on, but over time I've worked out a system that gets the perfect fit far more often than not.

The easiest way to measure your horse is with a piece of string and a ruler. Make a knot near one end of the string. Lay the string over the horse with the knot at one measurement point. Find the other measurement point and hold your finger there. Keeping your finger on that point, lift the string off your horse and onto your ruler. Either standard or metric measurements are fine. After you've recorded the length, you can move on to the next measurement. That's all there is to it! Here are the measurements I like to have to ensure a perfect fit for an English bridle. Also, be sure to tell me if you are planning to use a rider doll in your set-up as it does affect the rein length.

Thanks to my son Ryan for his help with the pictures.

The model featured in this entry is a customized Sandicast Quarter Horse resin named All Grown Up. She was sculpted by Sommer Prosser, customized by me, and painted by Hilary Schwafel. She's a great favorite of mine--I couldn't resist adding a full body picture of her to this post!