The Sommer Fitting frame or a wire tracing. Either method is good.

Just place the tool on your horses back and first, bend the "spine" of the tool to match your horses spine. then, starting at the front of the tool bend the "ribs" into position. The more closely you can match your horses shape, the better.

The first "rib" at the front of the measuring tool should be placed about 1 inch behind your horses shoulder. Try to mold the ribs into the "pocket" area behind the shoulder as closely as you can. Try as best you can, to keep the ribs symetrical. unless your horse is not symetrical! You can check for symetry by taking the tool off the horse and comparing the ribs side to side- are you bending the ribs on the left side of the horse more than on the right side? Sometimes it helps to bend the ribs on one side of the horse, and then move to the other side of the horse to bend the ribs on the other side. Dont try bending the ribs on both sides of the horse while standing on one side- its ok to do that for a rough draft, so to speak but for fine tuning you need to move around to each side and bend the ribs on the same side that you are standing on.
You will also find that it is easier to remove the frame from the horses back , bend it, and then put it back on the horse, to see if you have bent the frame enough.

This is the foundation of your saddle, so the more time you take while doing this, the more accurate the result will be.

photos that we need to order your saddle are:

1. A photo of the horse taken from the side, as in the photo shown above.
2. A photo of the horse showing the fitting frame or the wither tracing wire on the horse. (side view)
3. Please take the photos of the horse with the horse standing on level ground.

how the frame is used is shown in the photos below.

Making a wither tracing

first, imagine your horse with its saddle on its back. the front edge of the saddle should rest just behind the horses shoulder. the padded area under the saddle should sit in the horses "pocket" area behind the shoulder.

Bend the wire over the withers area so that it goes through the pocket, about 1 inch behind the back of the shoulder.

you can trace the outline of the withers on to a piece of paper and mail it to us, or do the math yourself.
or do both.

your wire shape will probably look something like this.

now take the wire and measure down the edge, on each side, 22.5 centimeters as in the picture below.
(or you can trace the shape out on a piece of paper and just mail it to us, and we will figure out the rest for you. )

now you will measure straight acoss to detirmine the width of the tree that you will need.



the horse shown in the photo will need a 30 cm tree width, which is a medium size tree.