Cinch Making is a Traditional Cowboy Art of weaving & tying Mohair into a beautiful piece of using equipment that offers great comfort to the horse. We offer Hand-made Mohair Cinches custom fit for your horse's comfort and the rider's style. Copper Canyon Cinches are offered in Traditional Cowboy designs to Wild and Sassy! Pick the colors to match your personality. Cinch width is an important factor in stabilizing your saddle and to reduce pressure points.
How it all began...
Back in the early 1980s I was running a roan gelding in barrels at rodeos, paying my dues, and learning the ropes, so to speak. During a morning slack, TD Roper Paul Tierney asked about my horse, and as we were talking Roy Cooper walked up. Those well respected guys shared valuable advice that day. That mohair cord roper style cinches dispersed pressure across the girth area and had just enough "give" that the horse didn't get as sore, especially taking the jerk from roping. They also suggested a snug back cinch to keep the saddle from popping up or twisting in a turn, and allowing less tension on the front cinch. Since then I've always used a diamond style mohair roper cinch on my horses with a snug back cinch which allows the front cinch to be worn looser.
30 years later...
We bought a gelding who has serious cinching problems. He has such nice ground manners that he wont pull back, but he will collapse and hit the ground. Like most people, at first we thought it was just a bad habit. I could pick up his front feet to clean, or pull on bell boots, without a saddle, and also with the saddle set on his back with cinch hanging straight down. But if I dare lace the latigo through the cinch buckle, even loosely, he would collapse when I picked up a front foot. While experimenting, we found that even if the cinch was hanging with a 2 inch gap below his body, he would drop to the ground if we picked up a foot. Copper has been through so much therapy, and all Bio-feed-back diagnostics point to girth pain. His treatments have been ongoing.
I'm always looking for solutions. While reading about girth pain in horses, I came across some articles about the benefits of 100% mohair hand tied cinches. I learned that most "mohair" cinches on the market are only partial mohair because there is no regulation on advertising of fiber content in the textile industry. I learned that many commercially produced cord cinches contain rayon which can cause discomfort. This is easy to test, just pluck a few strands of fiber and light a match to it. If it melts, then it contains rayon. Also, I learned that cinches which stretch 3 inches during use, most likely contain more wool than mohair. To our amazement we found a cinch marked as 32", actually measure 39 inches after riding!
As popularity increased, I chose leather reinforced centers on my roper style cinches, but eventually learned that the leather gets stiff from sweat and can cause pain (duh!). When checking our cinches, we found some cinches had hard cracked leather against the horses! A horse's skin is so sensitive, that they can feel a fly, yet often we overlook this cause of irritation.
The cinch style has a huge impact on saddle fitting.. A cinch's purpose is not only to attach the saddle to the horse. It's not just the length that matters, but the width of the cinch at the horses elbow. Read about cinch width and proper fitting in a Blog post.
All of these needs can be met with a plain natural mohair cord, of course the vibrant colored cord is always a favorite! I have a background of making intricate macrame art, and hand spinning, so my creative self was inspired! This was the beginning of Copper Canyon Cinches!
Each cinch is hand tied or woven into a beautiful piece of using equipment that offers great comfort to the horse. ~Leslie
How it all began...
Back in the early 1980s I was running a roan gelding in barrels at rodeos, paying my dues, and learning the ropes, so to speak. During a morning slack, TD Roper Paul Tierney asked about my horse, and as we were talking Roy Cooper walked up. Those well respected guys shared valuable advice that day. That mohair cord roper style cinches dispersed pressure across the girth area and had just enough "give" that the horse didn't get as sore, especially taking the jerk from roping. They also suggested a snug back cinch to keep the saddle from popping up or twisting in a turn, and allowing less tension on the front cinch. Since then I've always used a diamond style mohair roper cinch on my horses with a snug back cinch which allows the front cinch to be worn looser.
30 years later...
We bought a gelding who has serious cinching problems. He has such nice ground manners that he wont pull back, but he will collapse and hit the ground. Like most people, at first we thought it was just a bad habit. I could pick up his front feet to clean, or pull on bell boots, without a saddle, and also with the saddle set on his back with cinch hanging straight down. But if I dare lace the latigo through the cinch buckle, even loosely, he would collapse when I picked up a front foot. While experimenting, we found that even if the cinch was hanging with a 2 inch gap below his body, he would drop to the ground if we picked up a foot. Copper has been through so much therapy, and all Bio-feed-back diagnostics point to girth pain. His treatments have been ongoing.
I'm always looking for solutions. While reading about girth pain in horses, I came across some articles about the benefits of 100% mohair hand tied cinches. I learned that most "mohair" cinches on the market are only partial mohair because there is no regulation on advertising of fiber content in the textile industry. I learned that many commercially produced cord cinches contain rayon which can cause discomfort. This is easy to test, just pluck a few strands of fiber and light a match to it. If it melts, then it contains rayon. Also, I learned that cinches which stretch 3 inches during use, most likely contain more wool than mohair. To our amazement we found a cinch marked as 32", actually measure 39 inches after riding!
As popularity increased, I chose leather reinforced centers on my roper style cinches, but eventually learned that the leather gets stiff from sweat and can cause pain (duh!). When checking our cinches, we found some cinches had hard cracked leather against the horses! A horse's skin is so sensitive, that they can feel a fly, yet often we overlook this cause of irritation.
The cinch style has a huge impact on saddle fitting.. A cinch's purpose is not only to attach the saddle to the horse. It's not just the length that matters, but the width of the cinch at the horses elbow. Read about cinch width and proper fitting in a Blog post.
All of these needs can be met with a plain natural mohair cord, of course the vibrant colored cord is always a favorite! I have a background of making intricate macrame art, and hand spinning, so my creative self was inspired! This was the beginning of Copper Canyon Cinches!
Each cinch is hand tied or woven into a beautiful piece of using equipment that offers great comfort to the horse. ~Leslie