How to Make a Work Horse Collar

The harness shop makes our harness sets, such as the Pleasure/Buggy harness, the MaraFUN harness, the Field/Work harness, the Comfy Fit harness (of course!) and the Logging harness. Not only do they make all that for us, but they also make the collars! (And the halters and the Permasoft Pads and many of the other things on our website.)

We had the privilege of watching a collar being made from start to finish. It takes just about 45 minutes to make a large draft work collar. I asked if the mini and small pony collars take less time and they said no. Sometimes they take longer because the stitching is tricky! (They don’t make the tiny collars at this shop but have those shipped in from their other shop in Iowa.)

These are the Carefree FeatherFlex collars. I’ll share photos of the process from start to finish. It was so interesting to see how they make these!

This is the press that cuts the material into the shapes they need to make the collars.

Sewing the two sides together!

In this video he is sewing the rim of the collar:

This video shows how he punches the holes for the white lacing. I liked this machine. We all thought it sounded like a horse galloping along:

Then he put the lacing on. It was pretty neat to watch him. He had the lacing all pre-cut and even though it LOOKED like it was going to be too short it was the exact right length!

This video shows him sewing the body of the collar to the collar rim. They have devised ways to keep things from twisting as they sew. It’s so interesting to see how they set up their work space to be the most efficient!

And this machine was the coolest. He had designed and built it to make stuffing a collar easy and fast! It takes him 11 minutes to stuff a draft horse collar from the beginning to the end:

Then he puts the collar on the stretcher and uses a soft rubber mallet to pound it smooth and shape it.

The Carefree FeatherFlex collars are synthetic and will not rot or fade or split. They are built to last several lifetimes!