True ‘custom’ saddles are customized in the tree (structural chassis) of the saddle. Consider these criteria for achieving optimal fit to the rider.

Besides being comfortable for the rider, the saddle seat has a huge influence on the ability of the rider to sit properly and in balance, to be able to give good aids to the horse, and to become one with the horse so that the exercises are harmonious.

The front of the saddle should not be uncomfortable for the rider at either the pubic symphysis or in the private parts. This can be easily tested when trying saddles out for size in the shop, or on the horse. Test the saddle wearing jeans (which have lots of seaming in the crotch area). Sit on the saddle and lean far forward and far back. You should be able to feel your jean seams only when you are out of the natural shoulder-hip-heel plumb line position. If you can feel the seams in the full range of this motion exercise, the saddle is not for you. Ask a friend to tell you when you are actually sitting straight.

Read more: How is a Saddle Custom Made for the Rider (5:21) - Saddlefit 4 Life

William “Bill” Henry Knight is widely considered one of the greatest stampers of all time. Due to family obligations, he cut his stamping career short, leaving leatherwork at the height of his craft, at age 40. But before he did that, within a condensed 15-year period, he executed some of the most extraordinary examples of American leather carving and tooling ever made. 

At 20, Bill apprenticed as a stamper at Rowell’s Ranch in Castro Valley, part of California’s Bay Area. There, Bill became immersed in the California-style stamping tradition, learning from craftsmen who had previously worked at California’s famous Visalia Stock Saddle Co. 

Stanley Diaz—the most renowned California stamper of the era—worked at Rowell’s during Bill’s time there. Dave Silva, who later became Visalia’s last foreman and one of the most acclaimed saddle makers of the second half of the 20th century, apprenticed at Rowell’s at the same time as Bill. 

It is unknown whether (and if so, to what extent) Diaz taught Bill how to stamp, but it is obvious that Diaz’s work—and the Visalia stamping tradition generally—had a profound influence on Bill.   

Indeed, among Bill’s personal possessions, he kept, together with three Ray Holes Saddle Co. catalogues in which his work appeared (Numbers 48, 52 and 57), a 1942 Visalia advertisement depicting a finely tooled saddle very similar to the work Diaz was doing at the time.

While serving on the Sea of Japan during World War II, Bill honed his stamping skills during off-duty hours making stamping tools out of nails and other materials he could find. When Bill returned home to Idaho after the war, he intended to take up where he left off at Rowell’s by making a career in saddle making.

Over the next five years, at Ray Holes’ shop, Bill executed some of the finest examples of stamping ever published in a saddle shop catalog. The following decade, he stamped exquisite trophy saddles at Hamley’s & Co, including the 1959, “Oregon Centennial” saddle. Then, like the streak of his talent that hit the saddle making world in the 1940s, he was gone. 

Bill was born on January 30, 1921, in New Plymouth, Idaho. His parents, Clarence and Viola Knight, had five children of whom Bill was the middle child. By all accounts, he grew up in a loving Idaho country household, where creativity, good works, self-sufficiency and family life were celebrated. 

In his 80s, Bill took up journaling about his life. In his biographical essays, which demonstrate his artist’s touch, he wrote about his childhood.  

Writing about his mother, Bill stated, “She was the most beautiful human I could imagine. She learned to cook and to sew and to love it I know, for she did it bettern’n anyone else. She loved gardening, for food and flowers.” “I never had a store-bought shirt while I lived at home,” he wrote, “same as Dad and both my brothers.” 

Bill recalled “the pump in the yard of the country school, with its drinking cup hung on a wire hook,” and the “magpie nest in the cottonwoods down by the river.” “There was a slough almost stagnant, where you could almost always see a muskrat and out in the sagebrush, just across the irrigation canal, you’d scare up jack rabbits and once in a long while, a coyote,” he wrote. 

In keeping with their idyllic home life, the Knight children grew up to be romantics—Bill’s older sister, Lois, was a gifted singer and piano player; his younger sister, Bonnie, and younger brother, Terry, were also singers and musicians; and his older brother, Buck, grew up to be a working cowboy who managed ranches all his life. 

Bill loved the West. Recalling the times when he, Buck, and his father attended rodeos, Bill stated, “Dad was possibly classifiably a rodeo fan. He went and took brother Buck and me to convent rodeos in neighboring towns, until we grew familiar with the various events, and gradually with some of the more prominent contestants.” 

Bill recalled the first time he attended the Pendleton Round-Up, stating, “Maybe I was about 13, the first time [Dad] took us to the Pendleton Round Up. That was definitely big time. There they saddled the bucking broncs right out in the arena, rather than inside a closed chute, making it more like a realistic ranch event.”  

At the Pendleton Round Up, Bill watched three-time World All-Around Champion, Robert “Bob” A. Crosby, referred to as “King of the Cowboys” by Life magazine. Of Crosby, Bill said, he “was a big money winner at calf roping and maybe other timed events” and “hero worship welled up when he performed.” 

Bill graduated from New Plymouth High School in 1939, after which he attended Boise Junior College (now known as Boise State University). As a young man, Bill aspired to become a writer and journalist.  

During their courtship, Bill wrote his high school sweetheart and future wife, Sara Louise Tucker, a poem titled My Road— (February 14, 1938), which is reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling’s If— and just as powerful: 

“I want to be the kind of man 

That wants to live, and really can! 

                              That is my ambition. 

And when I’ve served my sentence out 

I’ll face my maker without doubt 

                              Of my position. 

I want to live in such a way 

That men who know me well can say: 

                              “He never lied 

To any fellow—fool or king, 

But smiled—at death, and everything.” 

You bet, I’ll have a home or bust 

A love—an inter-family trust— 

                              And then stick to it. 

I want to be the type of lout 

That I’d be proud to brag about— 

                              —And then—Not do it!” 

On July 8, 1940, Bill, age 19, married Sara, age 18. Sara, whose mother was from Mexico, was a devout Catholic. Bill, who was raised as a Methodist, also became a devout Catholic.

When the young couple started having children, Bill worried about being able to support them. They went to see a Catholic priest, about whether there might be any flexibility in the rules prohibiting the use of birth control. The priest essentially told them, “It is what it is.”  

Bill and Sara eventually had seven children—six sons (three of whom studied for the priesthood, but ultimately opted for conventional family life) and a daughter. 

In 1941, Bill started his stamping career with an apprenticeship at Harry Rowell’s Ranch in Castro Valley, California. Bill worked there with his then brother-in-law Steve Hoagland, a saddle maker, who had married Bill’s sister Lois during her time as a singer in the Bay Area. 

Rowell, known as the “Rodeo King of the West,” arrived in the Bay Area in 1912, in his early 20s as a penniless Englishman. By the 1940s, he was living the American dream as the successful owner of slaughterhouses, a rancher and a rodeo producer and promoter—and founder of the famous Rowell Ranch Rodeo. 

Rowell wanted to establish a saddle making business that would complement his other businesses. Following the standard modus operandi, he deployed to create his business empire; Rowell partnered with and hired the best workers he could find. 

Rowell convinced Visalia’s foreman, Victor Alexander, to partner with him. In 1940, at Rowell Ranch, the two formed the Victor Alexander Company, with Alexander serving as president and Rowell as vice president. 

Alexander, originally from Gallup/Ft. Wingate, New Mexico, previously worked on dude ranches and competed in the rodeo circuit throughout the country. After an injury in Miles City, Montana, Alexander joined Visalia in 1935 (then under the direction of Leland Bergen), and became Visalia’s foreman after five years. 

When Alexander left Visalia for Rowell’s, a number of former Visalia workers followed him there, including stamper Stanley Diaz. 

According to Victoria Carlyle Weiland and William A. Strobel’s Here’s A Go! Remembering Harry Rowell and the Rowell Ranch Rodeo, every worker at Rowell’s new saddle shop was “a specialist, whether silver or goldsmiths, engravers, leather toolers, wood workers who made the saddle trees, or spinners who spun the mohair from which the cinches and ropes were made.”  

Weiland and Strobel state that, before the doors opened, the company had $20,000 worth of orders and a waiting list of 25 clients from Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, Nevada, the Midwest and Canada. Rowell secured lucrative contracts with Sears, Roebuck & Company to develop saddle lines for them. Bronc rider Fritz Truan, fresh after winning the prestigious Madison Square Garden saddle bronc riding title, placed the company’s first order, which was for a hand-tooled belt. 

Thus, at the time Bill apprenticed at Rowell’s Ranch, it offered a unique environment for a young stamper interested in rodeos and the western lifestyle and tradition. Indeed, as proof of Rowell’s ability to attract talent, three of the greatest California style stampers—Stanley Diaz, Dave Silva and Bill Knight—all worked together at Rowell’s before World War II.

According to Silva, Diaz noticed Silva tooling backgrounds on saddles at the shop. Diaz told him, “Kid, you’re too good. You can do backgrounds on my stuff,” and from that point, Silva worked directly under Diaz.  

Silva described Diaz as “one of the greatest rose stampers of all time, very likely the best rose tooler in the world.” Referring to the realism of Diaz’s work, Silva said, “You could almost reach in and pick them.” 

According to Silva, the young stampers at Rowell’s envied his relationship with Diaz. It is very likely that Bill was one of those young stampers who watched in awe, as Diaz plied his trade with young Silva by his side.

The details of Bill’s relationship with Diaz are unknown. However, Diaz’s carving and tooling style – and more generally, the California stamping tradition which emphasized an effort at realism using specific flowers, buds and stems, developed at Visalia and other Bay Area saddle shops – made a tremendous impression on Bill. 

Later in his career, when Bill’s admirers referred to him as a “master saddle maker,” he would balk. While Bill could make a saddle, he did not consider himself a master saddle maker.  

But when his admirers referred to him as “a master stamper,” he beamed with pride and did not protest the point. After all, he was indeed a master stamper and had learned from, and worked alongside, some of the best in the history of the craft in America. 

World War II interrupted the work of many of Rowell’s workers; Bill was no exception, despite his uneasiness about war. Along with Diaz, Silva and others at Rowell’s, Bill joined the war effort. 

Read more: The Extraordinary Talent of Bill Knight

William “Bill” Henry Knight is widely considered one of the greatest stampers of all time. Due to family obligations, he cut his stamping career short, leaving leatherwork at the height of his craft, at age 40. But before he did that, within a condensed 15-year period, he executed some of the most extraordinary examples of American leather carving and tooling ever made. 

At 20, Bill apprenticed as a stamper at Rowell’s Ranch in Castro Valley, part of California’s Bay Area. There, Bill became immersed in the California-style stamping tradition, learning from craftsmen who had previously worked at California’s famous Visalia Stock Saddle Co. 

Stanley Diaz—the most renowned California stamper of the era—worked at Rowell’s during Bill’s time there. Dave Silva, who later became Visalia’s last foreman and one of the most acclaimed saddle makers of the second half of the 20th century, apprenticed at Rowell’s at the same time as Bill. 

It is unknown whether (and if so, to what extent) Diaz taught Bill how to stamp, but it is obvious that Diaz’s work—and the Visalia stamping tradition generally—had a profound influence on Bill.   

Indeed, among Bill’s personal possessions, he kept, together with three Ray Holes Saddle Co. catalogues in which his work appeared (Numbers 48, 52 and 57), a 1942 Visalia advertisement depicting a finely tooled saddle very similar to the work Diaz was doing at the time.

While serving on the Sea of Japan during World War II, Bill honed his stamping skills during off-duty hours making stamping tools out of nails and other materials he could find. When Bill returned home to Idaho after the war, he intended to take up where he left off at Rowell’s by making a career in saddle making.

Over the next five years, at Ray Holes’ shop, Bill executed some of the finest examples of stamping ever published in a saddle shop catalog. The following decade, he stamped exquisite trophy saddles at Hamley’s & Co, including the 1959, “Oregon Centennial” saddle. Then, like the streak of his talent that hit the saddle making world in the 1940s, he was gone. 

Bill was born on January 30, 1921, in New Plymouth, Idaho. His parents, Clarence and Viola Knight, had five children of whom Bill was the middle child. By all accounts, he grew up in a loving Idaho country household, where creativity, good works, self-sufficiency and family life were celebrated. 

In his 80s, Bill took up journaling about his life. In his biographical essays, which demonstrate his artist’s touch, he wrote about his childhood.  

Writing about his mother, Bill stated, “She was the most beautiful human I could imagine. She learned to cook and to sew and to love it I know, for she did it bettern’n anyone else. She loved gardening, for food and flowers.” “I never had a store-bought shirt while I lived at home,” he wrote, “same as Dad and both my brothers.” 

Bill recalled “the pump in the yard of the country school, with its drinking cup hung on a wire hook,” and the “magpie nest in the cottonwoods down by the river.” “There was a slough almost stagnant, where you could almost always see a muskrat and out in the sagebrush, just across the irrigation canal, you’d scare up jack rabbits and once in a long while, a coyote,” he wrote. 

In keeping with their idyllic home life, the Knight children grew up to be romantics—Bill’s older sister, Lois, was a gifted singer and piano player; his younger sister, Bonnie, and younger brother, Terry, were also singers and musicians; and his older brother, Buck, grew up to be a working cowboy who managed ranches all his life. 

Bill loved the West. Recalling the times when he, Buck, and his father attended rodeos, Bill stated, “Dad was possibly classifiably a rodeo fan. He went and took brother Buck and me to convent rodeos in neighboring towns, until we grew familiar with the various events, and gradually with some of the more prominent contestants.” 

Bill recalled the first time he attended the Pendleton Round-Up, stating, “Maybe I was about 13, the first time [Dad] took us to the Pendleton Round Up. That was definitely big time. There they saddled the bucking broncs right out in the arena, rather than inside a closed chute, making it more like a realistic ranch event.”  

At the Pendleton Round Up, Bill watched three-time World All-Around Champion, Robert “Bob” A. Crosby, referred to as “King of the Cowboys” by Life magazine. Of Crosby, Bill said, he “was a big money winner at calf roping and maybe other timed events” and “hero worship welled up when he performed.” 

Bill graduated from New Plymouth High School in 1939, after which he attended Boise Junior College (now known as Boise State University). As a young man, Bill aspired to become a writer and journalist.  

During their courtship, Bill wrote his high school sweetheart and future wife, Sara Louise Tucker, a poem titled My Road— (February 14, 1938), which is reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling’s If— and just as powerful: 

“I want to be the kind of man 

That wants to live, and really can! 

                              That is my ambition. 

And when I’ve served my sentence out 

I’ll face my maker without doubt 

                              Of my position. 

I want to live in such a way 

That men who know me well can say: 

                              “He never lied 

To any fellow—fool or king, 

But smiled—at death, and everything.” 

You bet, I’ll have a home or bust 

A love—an inter-family trust— 

                              And then stick to it. 

I want to be the type of lout 

That I’d be proud to brag about— 

                              —And then—Not do it!” 

On July 8, 1940, Bill, age 19, married Sara, age 18. Sara, whose mother was from Mexico, was a devout Catholic. Bill, who was raised as a Methodist, also became a devout Catholic.

When the young couple started having children, Bill worried about being able to support them. They went to see a Catholic priest, about whether there might be any flexibility in the rules prohibiting the use of birth control. The priest essentially told them, “It is what it is.”  

Bill and Sara eventually had seven children—six sons (three of whom studied for the priesthood, but ultimately opted for conventional family life) and a daughter. 

In 1941, Bill started his stamping career with an apprenticeship at Harry Rowell’s Ranch in Castro Valley, California. Bill worked there with his then brother-in-law Steve Hoagland, a saddle maker, who had married Bill’s sister Lois during her time as a singer in the Bay Area. 

Rowell, known as the “Rodeo King of the West,” arrived in the Bay Area in 1912, in his early 20s as a penniless Englishman. By the 1940s, he was living the American dream as the successful owner of slaughterhouses, a rancher and a rodeo producer and promoter—and founder of the famous Rowell Ranch Rodeo. 

Rowell wanted to establish a saddle making business that would complement his other businesses. Following the standard modus operandi, he deployed to create his business empire; Rowell partnered with and hired the best workers he could find. 

Rowell convinced Visalia’s foreman, Victor Alexander, to partner with him. In 1940, at Rowell Ranch, the two formed the Victor Alexander Company, with Alexander serving as president and Rowell as vice president. 

Alexander, originally from Gallup/Ft. Wingate, New Mexico, previously worked on dude ranches and competed in the rodeo circuit throughout the country. After an injury in Miles City, Montana, Alexander joined Visalia in 1935 (then under the direction of Leland Bergen), and became Visalia’s foreman after five years. 

When Alexander left Visalia for Rowell’s, a number of former Visalia workers followed him there, including stamper Stanley Diaz. 

According to Victoria Carlyle Weiland and William A. Strobel’s Here’s A Go! Remembering Harry Rowell and the Rowell Ranch Rodeo, every worker at Rowell’s new saddle shop was “a specialist, whether silver or goldsmiths, engravers, leather toolers, wood workers who made the saddle trees, or spinners who spun the mohair from which the cinches and ropes were made.”  

Weiland and Strobel state that, before the doors opened, the company had $20,000 worth of orders and a waiting list of 25 clients from Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, Nevada, the Midwest and Canada. Rowell secured lucrative contracts with Sears, Roebuck & Company to develop saddle lines for them. Bronc rider Fritz Truan, fresh after winning the prestigious Madison Square Garden saddle bronc riding title, placed the company’s first order, which was for a hand-tooled belt. 

Thus, at the time Bill apprenticed at Rowell’s Ranch, it offered a unique environment for a young stamper interested in rodeos and the western lifestyle and tradition. Indeed, as proof of Rowell’s ability to attract talent, three of the greatest California style stampers—Stanley Diaz, Dave Silva and Bill Knight—all worked together at Rowell’s before World War II.

According to Silva, Diaz noticed Silva tooling backgrounds on saddles at the shop. Diaz told him, “Kid, you’re too good. You can do backgrounds on my stuff,” and from that point, Silva worked directly under Diaz.  

Silva described Diaz as “one of the greatest rose stampers of all time, very likely the best rose tooler in the world.” Referring to the realism of Diaz’s work, Silva said, “You could almost reach in and pick them.” 

According to Silva, the young stampers at Rowell’s envied his relationship with Diaz. It is very likely that Bill was one of those young stampers who watched in awe, as Diaz plied his trade with young Silva by his side.

The details of Bill’s relationship with Diaz are unknown. However, Diaz’s carving and tooling style – and more generally, the California stamping tradition which emphasized an effort at realism using specific flowers, buds and stems, developed at Visalia and other Bay Area saddle shops – made a tremendous impression on Bill. 

Later in his career, when Bill’s admirers referred to him as a “master saddle maker,” he would balk. While Bill could make a saddle, he did not consider himself a master saddle maker.  

But when his admirers referred to him as “a master stamper,” he beamed with pride and did not protest the point. After all, he was indeed a master stamper and had learned from, and worked alongside, some of the best in the history of the craft in America. 

World War II interrupted the work of many of Rowell’s workers; Bill was no exception, despite his uneasiness about war. Along with Diaz, Silva and others at Rowell’s, Bill joined the war effort. 

Read more: The Extraordinary Talent of Bill Knight (2)