Carts and harnesses

[Josie]

I'm very lucky to live less than half an hour from the Utterly Horses shop in Essex, and when I went for the first time a few weeks ago I found they had several little carts with very broken harnesses, but I could see they had potential and seemed like the right sort of size for the Julip donkey, so I came home with five

I've had great fun (and spent many hours!) fixing the harnesses up and adding/altering bits to make them fit, and I *think* I've finished 3 out of the 5 I came home with. I'm at uni at the moment and all the carts and harnesses are at home because I've run out of buckles and want to do the harnesses justice, and not insult them with my crude paperclip imitation ones Hopefully when I go home on Thursday I'll be able to nip out to UH and stock up, with a view to getting them all done and bringing them to the show on Saturday. Four of them will be for sale at lunch time if anyone's interested!

This is the first one, not quite finished at this point as you can see. This one is maybe 90% of the original old dusty leather harness the cart came with (the bridle and reins are new and made to fit). The harness started out unable to detatch from the actual cart and the chains were attached in bizarre places, which I've since sorted since this pic. You can see the broken leather around the breastcollar as well. All sorted now! As you can see I didn't really understand how a harness worked at this point, hence why the back of the harness is under the hind legs as opposed to round the back of the haunches, heh.



The harness of the second one was a lot more damaged, so I've completely replaced the front part of the harness and made it more of an exercise/scurry set. The padding under the roller has been trimmed down since this was taken



And I'm going to share this photo because it was an entertaining accident when I accidentally flicked my rider off the cart and he ended up on the floor dragging poor Nutmeg



The third one I sadly don't have any photos of yet, but started as a cart that came harness-less. So the harness has been made from scratch and is fully adjustable, in order to fit most of the ponies! It has buckles at the crupper, roller, breast straps etc and fits my donkey and my show cob once you've had a fiddle with the fit.

Three down, two to go!

[EG]

Ooooh, they look brilliant! I've got a couple of those carts too - one I've dismantled as it was too wide for any of my Julips, but the other sometimes makes an appearance at Christmas with Jaconelli...


Jaconelli delivers the presents by Elrenia_Greenleaf, on Flickr

It's really too wide for him too but oh well. XD

[thelonehick]

Oh, they look great! I especially like the draft collar in the first one. You took on quite a project starting with five!

EG--the red harness is very holiday-y!

[Beth]

what brand are these carts and where can I get one?

[Josie]

Love that harness EG, one of the ones I've got that came with the cart is red but I don't have any red leather to do it justice!

Not sure what brand they are to be honest Beth, but I'll happily sell them as I only want to keep one

[george]

One thing I've noticed in both your carts, Josie, you've not actually got the collars attached to the vehicles! Whether the harness has a proper collar, or a breastcollar, that is the part the horse/donkey pulls with - the bits which come over the back and loop round each shaft are the tugs and (despite the name suggesting that they 'tug' it along!) are just to support the shafts at the right height. If your donkey were to start walking forward, the carts wouldn't move!


In this one, you need to snip the front chain in half - it ought to come from the collar to the metal loop attachment on the shaft, AND from the saddle pad to the metal loop. Two seperate bits. You've already worked out where the breeching needs to be moved to, once that's all done and it's got three seperate chains it'll be just right!


In this one, the black leather strap which goes round the chest, needs to be extended on each side, all the way to the cart itself, just about where the rider's feet are. You might need to screw in a couple of brass eyes to attach the straps (traces) cos it doesn't look like the carts come with any attachments there. Sellotaping them underneath it would do for simplicity!

[Josie]

My bad with being a rubbish explainer, the top harness came wonky, so on the near side it was like that, with that odd chain-loop that doesn't really do anything, but the other side had the three separate chains! So what I've done is removed the links that weren't needed/made the harness too big from both sides, snipped that chain in half like you've explained, and added in the extra links to get enough chain to make it into three. This is the problem with taking pictures before you're finished and being rubbish at explaining

I hadn't realised that about the second one but it makes sense, I guess there would be nothing to brace against and the cart would just be dragged rather than properly pulled? I clearly have work to do

[george]

Yeah, they push against the collar with their chest/shoulders to move the cart/plough/etc, rather than pulling it with any of the other straps/chains - the one over the back is just to hold the cart level, and the breeching round the back is for brakes, all the forward motion comes from the collar.
You can get them dragging a load with just the collar, nothing else ( 4.bp.blogspot.com/_vHQiMIFUgeQ/TT2iM7U3HWI/AAAAAAAAAFg/pN64h4JT4us/s1600/Horselogging+013.jpg )

[joeypf]

I'd be interested in buying one! (and if one of the still unfinished sets doesnt have a harness, could I request red leather? or green? haha, shoot me a PM if we can work something out)

[pip]

they look great! definitely remind me of some of the older julip accessories.

[kits]

The ones I saw yesterday at the show looked fab

[Josie]

Oct 28, 2014 22:01:58 GMT joeypf said:

I'd be interested in buying one! (and if one of the still unfinished sets doesnt have a harness, could I request red leather? or green? haha, shoot me a PM if we can work something out)

I have some red leather now, courtesy of Manda (thanks Manda!) shoot me a PM if you're still interested, don't know if you got my message the other day

Nov 2, 2014 16:36:20 GMT pip said:

they look great! definitely remind me of some of the older julip accessories.

Nov 2, 2014 19:16:19 GMT kits said:

The ones I saw yesterday at the show looked fab

Thanks both! Might use one on my new fuzzy little dartmoor

[kits]

Ooooh do - maybe my farm cob could pull something too, and they could keep up the little'n'large act!