[lifestyle ] A leather-crafting tradition carries on in the Panhandle

[_Happy boy]

estern Nebraska has a storied past with saddle making, but the people who continue the craft don’t always adhere to tradition — they like making saddles more than history.

Three Panhandle saddlemakers spoke of their love of horses and cowboy culture as inspirations to pursue customizing Western saddles. It’s not a craft for the faint-hearted. Saddlemakers told the Star-Herald it takes between eight to 10 days to make — when pouring nearly all waking energy into it — then there’s the techniques involved.

“You don’t jump into saddle making,” Alliance-based saddlemaker Joe Roberts said.

“Saddle making requires pretty much everything involved in leather work: molding, casing, tooling, stamping, sewing, edging. You’ve got to be proficient in those areas, because making a saddle is that, on steroids,” he added.

Roberts, who was born in Columbia City, Indiana, said he first started leather working in Cubs Scouts four decades ago. He said he was “90% self-taught” before taking a saddle-making class in Kentucky and finished his first saddle in 2017. He moved to Nebraska and set up shop, finding inspiration from other custom saddlemakers in the Panhandle.

One of those men, Dennis Rose, was born and raised in Nebraska, starting in Alliance, then moving to Arthur. Growing up on a ranch, he didn’t have any family members who did leatherwork.

“My parents bought me a beginner’s kit from Tandy’s when I was 10,” he said. “From then on, I was always messing around with leather.”

He remembered visiting Newberry’s in Alliance, which dedicated the third floor to custom saddlemakers and bridlers from 1888 nearly into the 1950s.

The 5,000 or so saddles Newberry’s made were documented in small bound journals, donated to the Knight Museum and Sandhills Center. Those journals tell more about the original owners in the area. There’s also Newberry, a 120-year old model horse made of wood and paper mâché, which stands at the entrance wearing one of the two crafted saddles the museum owns.

The store continues on as Bernie’s Hardware, making it the longest running shop in Alliance.

Becci Thomas, the Knight Museum’s director, said they have records for all but the first 700 saddles, since that book was never recovered, but said it’s rare to recover a saddle, since they are valued family heirlooms.

“They are so revered that people keep them in families for generations,” she said. “Once in a blue moon, we’ll see one on eBay. And I usually try to contact the seller and get the number off of it to see if I can see who the original owner was.”

She said world history is what changed the business Chenia Newberry first started.

“The way I understand it, a lot of his saddlemakers were drafted in World War II, and a lot of them just didn’t come back,” Thomas said. “They didn’t die, but they went on to other things.”

“I always liked goin’ up there, lookin’ around and trying to figure out what those guys were doing,” Rose said.

He apprenticed under saddlemaker Wes Fuesner of Ogallala, and later attended the Texas State Technical Institute for saddlemaking. He built his business, Rose Saddlery, in 1978.

Rose also makes saddles of a different kind, outfitting motorcycles and vending at Sturgis.

He said he loves the finished project, but the work to get there is difficult.

“It takes one full cow to build, and then one sheep — so a lot of time goes in it,” he said. “I think the fastest I ever built one was eight days, and they’ll go up to three or four weeks.”

Then, there’s the man Roberts and Rose both said is a “master” in his own right.

Bob Klinda, 84, said his love in saddle making is the leather carving, which is the technique of stamping, cutting and staining to produce three-dimensional etchings.

“I enjoy the carvin’,” he said. “If I was to do one part over the other, why, carvin’ I’d probably do it firsthand.”

He develops patterns for all sorts of commissions, often types of flowers or whorls. Occasionally, he receives an unusual commission, such as a Welsh woman’s request for a saddle with the Welsh dragon surrounded by intricate Celtic knot designs.

Klinda started his first saddle while serving in the Armed Forces in 1959, really getting into leather work when he was about 24.

“I never got it finished, but I started it,” he said, pointing to a dark saddle in the corner.

Since opening up his shop in 1962, an estimated 500 saddles in nearly six decades. That doesn’t include the countless pairs of chaps, saddlebags, belts and other Western kits he’s made over the years, much of it documented in photographs at his shop.

Klinda’s workshop is in a little building beside his yellow house just south of the Kimball County line. Outside in the paddock is a bay and black horse and three cows snuffling around the hay. They recently moved there from Colorado to be closer to family.

Klinda, when reflecting in his shop, said he was surprised that his life was shaped by saddle making, giving him independence.

“I’ve always worked for myself,” he said. “I’m not a 9 to 5 person.”

He said his worst subject in school was English, so he finds it ironic he writes a column “From My Bench to Yours” for the bi-monthly magazine Leathers Crafters and Saddlers Journal. He said he spends more of his time now answering emails and calls from people across the country — and the world asking his advice on saddle making.

“I talked to four people from around the country this morning,” he said, laughing a little. “I do like it, but if I get four hours in the shop doing something productive, it’s a good day.”