feedback on Harness

[ACE]

Hello from Eastern Ontario, I am looking to purchase a new harness for my team (Belgians), one of the more popular styles seems to be the western style harness, I like the New England D-ring harness and have read some good threads on it. I use the girls for work around the farm, wagon and sliegh rides, and a little bush work (mostly firewood) and curently have a borrowed older leather d-ring harness that is really a western style with d-ring trace, just looking for some feedback on the different styles of harness, and your prefrences, also nylon vs. leather. vs bio. vs granite ?

Thanks

[TBigLug]

For weight and strength we’ve had great luck with bio. I like the look and feel of leather though. After a while leather gets heavy throwing it over a 19 hander.

[Anonymous]

i’ve got a biothane harness and love it. the lower hame strap is leather, i replace that every year. the driving lines , i believe are beta material, love those, better than leather, they can be a little stiff when cold , but warm right up, feel good in the hand. style is western farm harness, would prefer d ring though. bob h.

[J-L]

I have both nylon and leather harness. I’d have to say I do like the leather better, but that might change as I get older because of the nylons light weight.
I also have a set of beta lines and like them close to as well as leather. My old heavy leather lines are nice in this Wyoming wind. I did try nylon lines that came with the nylon harness and really hate them.
My harness preference is the ‘yankee’ brichen style. I have one set of these and two sets of ‘box’ brichen harness. If I had my druthers I’d go with the yankee brichen where I have to back a lot and come down some fairly steep grades. It tends to put weight on the hind legs vs wanting to sweep them out from under your team when you’ve got a load on coming down a grade.
I’ve never used the ‘D’ ring style so can’t comment on it. It seems to work well for a lot of folks in the north east though.

[Howie]

All you talk about here is the leather hame strap. Does any one use the metal hame fastener? That is what I grew up with.

[TBigLug]

We use metal hame fasteners on ours working around the farm. When we pull, we either use the heavy duty ones or do a double nylon strap.

[Carl Russell]

Leather D-ring harness, metal hames, hames fastener in all conditions, Beta lines. Swear by all the above. I can’t say they are right for you though.
Carl

[Gabe Ayers]

We use nylon D-ring harness with leather on the parts that benefit from having a memory (Saddle/back band and brichen) and nylon where it needs strength. It has been called a combo harness or integrated harness.

We use pulling logging hames that have the welded trace attachment, thicker metal tubing, deeper curved shape and double hame strap rings on the bottoms. We use the heavy duty hame fasteners that have never failed, except when the c-shaped metal breaks (only a couple of times in 30 years).
I think the newer ones have an improved top hame adjustment with holes and bolts instead of the adjustable motels of my older set of pulling/logging hames.

We get this hame equipment from Chupp’s Blacksmith Shop in Fredericksburg, Ohio or any good harness shop. Another source is Hillside Harness Hardware in Millersburg, Ohio, that is also where we get all our elbow bits.

We use Sugar Valley Collar shop Lagotee no choke, Logging/Pulling collars that feature full grain leather on all faces. I prefer leather lines, but usually work with the two collar beta lines that give more information to the handler as to which horse they have in which hand. We buy two sets and put a brown with a black to make two team sets of what we call logger’s lines. A good harness shop can make those for you if you ask.

[becorson]

I have two 1200 pound draft cross mares that i use for draft work and pleasure driving. for the past 5 years or so i have used (leather) Scandinavian style harness . it’s a versatile, durable harness that has worked well for me and my horses.

[Rob FLory]

A google patent search on this term brings more designs than you can possibly imagine.

http://www.google.com/patents?q=hame+fastener

Rob Flory

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