The AUSTRALIAN STOCK SADDLE Co.
America's Original Source
Established 1979

email Address TASSC@aol.com

  Mailing Address
   P.O. Box 987
   Malibu, CA 90265
 Street Address
   184 North Kanan Dume Rd     Malibu, CA  90265
Phone (818) 889-6988
 Fax:    (818) 889 7271

How To Trace The Whole Back:

1. Find a piece of wire that will bend easily, but holds its shape. Soldering wire is good, so is a common coat hanger.
2. Place this over the wither, as indicated with position "A". Adjust the wire until it perfectly reflects the shape of the wither. Place this on a sheet of paper and follow the INSIDE line of the wire to make a drawing. (Mark this "A").
3. Repeat with positions "B" and "C", spacing 5 inches in-between.
4. Now lay the wire along the horse’s spine, covering the distance from "A" to "C". This total length will be 10 inches. Do your our fitting drawing
5. Fax these drawings to (818) 889-7271. We then take your FAXES, make cardboard cutouts, set the gauge, and duplicate the back of your horse. The gauge has an extra arm. Do this extra tracing if you wish, but our experience indicates it is not necessary.

A saddle gauge is here to precisely measure the horse, and can thus be used to precisely measure the saddle the horse will wear!

The inventor is Robert Ferrand, a true genius in his own right, with some 25 patents to his credit. Ferrand was a late starter in the horse world and being a novice rider, but an eminent engineer, was astonished that there was no accurate way to measure a horse’s back. He started with computers—his home territory—but ended up with a "low-tech" solution to a high-volume problem. Interestingly, his choice of saddlery, as a trail rider, was the Australian stock saddle.

As he says: "Of all the equipment used on horses by trail riders, this made the most sense. I could not understand why everybody who rode trails, and cares for their horse, and their own safety, did not ride Australian. From an engineering point-of-view, and from a rider’s point-of-view, it is brilliant."

The Australian Stock Saddle Company worked with Robert Ferrand through various stages of development that resulted in this remarkable instrument, the first of it’s kind.

To save the expense and time of shipping gauges, we have developed a technique of wire tracings. See instructions. It is simple and easy. You FAX us the tracings from A through D. We make a template from these tracings, place them in the Ferrand gauge, and then we can accurately reproduce the back of the horse as it relates to the underside of the saddle.