Bar Broken Heart Saddlery
Owners: Joe and Kathy Lester
Location: Kansas, Okla.
History: “I started in junior high school in an industrial education class when I was in the eighth grade making belts. My dad and uncle had a welding shop so I got into building spurs. Then I got interested in saddle and saddle tree making. I cowboyed for a while in Canada. I needed a lot of different things. Out of necessity, I learned to make them. Kathy and I developed Bar Broken Heart Saddlery from there. We have been here for 22 years. There are a lot of good saddle makers out there who have never been on a horse. If you spend 10 to 15 hours a day in a saddle, you will learn a whole lot about how one ought to feel when you sit in it. It makes a lot of difference.”
Products and Services: “We do a lot of different leather work. With the introduction of the Internet and the computer, we sell all over the country. We make 60 to 70 percent of all of our leather goods. We do repair and custom work saddles, tack and just about anything a cowboy in this part of the county is going to need. A big part of our business is repair and rebuilds. If you have a design you want on a custom job that represents who you are and you want to put it on leather, Kathy can make that design or can design something for you. It can be painted, dyed or hand tooled. We build in the Texas style saddles. We also do a lot of rodeo type equipment. You kind of have to know the difference in the equipment and what a guy is looking for. You have to study a lot of cowboy lore, traditions. How it fits, how it works. We make some special items. We make holsters, cross draw holsters and different things. We make a night latch. The night latch goes on the swell of the saddle. It is simply a strap or handle that you can get a hold of to give you a little extra support in the saddle. Back in the trail driver days, the old cowboys had a night horse that they rode circle on at night. It was dark and if your horse had to move pretty fast, you had to have a pretty good hold on him. Boys who ride green horses or colts like them because our handle is so easy to get a hold of. We carry several flag holders all the time. We make five or six different kinds of spur leathers or spur straps to suit rodeo or ranch cowboys. We carry eight or 10 pairs of really heavy split reins for cowboys, cutting horse and sorting people. We will make about anything you can come up with no matter what style you want.”
