D-ring Front Trace

He may need to measure the leather, or strapping, but the measurement should be taken from hamebolt to D-ring….. How the ends are dressed is up to the harness maker… Or customer…. But the length of the front trace for a medium draft 16.2hh should be in the 21″ range. Of course shoulder slope, and collar style will play into that on each horse, but he will do much better with that estimate than with then 24″ that seems to be the industry standard.

Carl

I agree as well. I need to shorten the front tugs on our D-rings for our 16.3 Belgian and 16.2 Suffolk from 24″ to 20 or 21. They bow out just as you described Erika. This certainly diminishes the usefulness of the tongue weight-distributing properties of the harness to the back pad.

I also just acquired a third horse with a D-ring and Wallingford hames. Haven’t measured his harness fit yet, waiting on a collar that will fit his big neck. We’ll see how it fits soon enough!

I’m also thinking about switching from a bolt to a swivel like Rick mentioned. It’s hard to tell, but I think the short tug also wants to be lower than the hame bolt allows when the team’s pulling a load/implement on the ground. Does anyone else run their D-ring this way? Any appreciable difference in line of draft?

Erika, Thanks for bringing that down for Abner to see. I have thought about it in the past but haven’t got a laptop to bring.

When they made my harnesses, last winter, they were very helpful and didn’t mind doing a few custom adjustments to them for me. I had them make me a larger jack saddle with built in padding.

Recently I have realized, like you said, that the lazy jack straps for the jockey yoke are much too short and very over built. I would like to replace them with something longer and possibly lighter. I have been looking around old harness piles hoping to just find a light duty strap that is longer, but haven’t found one yet. I guess until I find something appropriate we could just use some bailing twine as Les suggests in his video.

Before ordering our harnesses I had spoken with Les about D-ring customizations and he had warned me of the 24″ short tugs. He suggested 22″ to fit our suffolks and that is what I ordered. They do billow a little bit when there is no load, but I wouldn’t say that it affects our ability to tighten the hitch between the yoke and evener. This is something I will be watching closely as the boys continue to grow.

Overall though I have to say that we have been very happy with our new harnesses from Peach Lane. We got the nylon version, they are holding up great, were very reasonably priced and fit very well.

Nice to think of Abner and Mose getting a chuckle and some new information out of the video.

I don’t use front lazy straps . If the harness is tight (tugs and britchen), the neck yoke is suspended right where it ought to be. In the video, that shot of Sax sitting on the neck yoke shows this. Tension is holding him and the neck yoke in place, not lazy straps.

I don’t know much about plowing, but for twitching wood I don’t use back lazy straps. I want the tugs unrestricted so the log will rise and fall with the terrain.

Along this line of thought, I suppose you’d have to figure the line of draft for a plow with a vector from the D-ring instead of the hame.

Also, hitching long on a sulky shouldn’t change the weight on the back pad as long as the hitch is tight.

But either way, loose hitch or sulky plow, I don’t see lazy straps having any role in the physics of getting the job done.

Like Carl, I had lazy straps for the hold back straps made from 3/4″ leather with a conway buckle and snap. I think they are currently adjusted to about 15″ inches in length. For me they only suspend the neck yoke during hitching, once I have the trace chains attached and adjusted properly there is no tension on the lazy straps.

I also had lazy straps for the traces made as the ones that came with my harness were much too short for ground skidding or implements with low hitch points (distorted rear trace putting pressure on hip drop/spider). These I had made from 1″ leather with a conway buckle and snap so I could remove them altogether when using carts and wagons as the straps serve no purpose with high hitch vehicles. I also use a 3″ ring which is what the trace runs through. I have found that the trace slides much easier through the ring (verses some type of leather piece), which allows some lift of the trace when needed (no load) but allows the lazy strap to slide up toward the D-ring when under load thus eliminating tension on the lazy strap from being transferred up to the hip drop. Similar to the front hold back strap lazy straps I don’t want any tension on these lazy straps either when under load. Right now I have these straps adjusted to about 20″ in length.

I added a couple of pictures to show the straps in use, it was hard to get one with the trace lazy straps under load as the black leather disappears against the the black coats.

John

Hi John:

I like your tug carrier – elegant, simple, and light. I have some of those leather monsters with decorative studs and thick leather straps. These are overkill and not very functional. Do you ever find the horses catching their bits on your lazy strap snaps? I think Les Barden might use his lazy straps for check reins when the horses are hitched and lazy straps not needed. Seems like a good idea but I would imagine you would have to attach them higher up on the hames to effective. Anyone else do this?

George

Erika, if Sam can find a way to shorten the neck yoke set up, it might help with the pole and draft angle for the sulky. I like to have the yoke under the horses’ noses, or even shorter if possible with a plug-yoke.

I stopped using the traditional neck yoke years ago. The old timer who sold me my first horse had made up a neck yoke from an old spread-chain, and it can be shortened by rolling it toward the horses, wrapping the chain around. I started doing that, just because I could, and found it to help significantly with the D-ring hitch, and pole height…. Of course it is the same basis for Les’ plug-yoke design.

The D-ring harness has some great features designed into it, but long front side straps and neck yoke can actually defeat the purpose of carrying weight on the saddle. The longer the arms of the suspension triangle, the harder it is to get a functional hitch.

There is conventional thought that there is a standard pole length, but I have found that I end up modifying pole length to fit my hitch…. And that is based on the way I set up my harness…. Not the other way around.

🙂

Carl