Let’s Discuss Materials!

If you have ever handled one of our harnesses you will know they are soft and supple. They feel like the finest leather. So it often comes as a surprise to people when they learn our harnesses are 100% synthetic strapping! You can have a nice soft leather lining if you choose but all the straps on our harnesses will be made of synthetic strapping.

If you have an older harness and then recently purchased new harness parts or even an entirely new harness you may notice that the strap we are using is different. Weaver has started making an even nicer, softer strap and we have switched all of our harnesses over to this lovely material. You can see below the new strap is a little bit shinier than the old soft strap.

**If you have an older harness and need parts to match it we still have access to the old style of strap. You just need to let us know your harness is more than a year old and we will do our best to match it!

If you choose a colored strap, that will still be made out of the older, thicker style. But any black or brown synthetic strap will be made of the new soft strap.

The heavy duty Farm/Work harnesses, the large horse and draft Pleasure/Buggy Harnesses and parts of the Comfy Fit and MaraFUN harnesses are made from a bit stiffer synthetic strap we call Brahma web. (What we call these straps on our website will not match the names of the same straps on the Weaver website.)

The Parade Harness and several of our other big horse/draft horse sized harnesses come with two options, Brahma Web and BioPlastic. The BioPlastic is very shiny and looks quite sharp in the show ring. But, this material will stick to a sweaty horse and can cause scalding of their hair and even sores. So we feel the BioPlastic is not appropriate for work harnesses or harness that your horse will be in all day.

This leads me to strap width. In various places around our website you will see charts that show the different widths of strapping that we use for the different sizes of harness ie, mini, pony, large pony, cob, horse and draft. This is especially important when you are ordering parts to mix and match your current harness. If we don’t know how wide the straps are on your harness it is very likely we will send you the wrong width strap with the wrong size buckles. Because, sometimes people want a narrower width strap for a fine boned large pony and sometimes people want a wider, more substantial strap for a small pony who is built very wide and stout.

Here is a list of the horse sizes and which size strap we typically use for that size:

Strapping Mini 5/8″ and 3/4″ Pony 3/4″ and 1″ Cob/ Horse 3/4″ and 1″ Draft 1″ and 1.25″

Traces Mini 1″ Pony 1″ Cob/Horse 1.25″ Draft 1.5″ or 2″

Lines Mini 5/8″ Pony 3/4″ Cob/Horse 1″ Draft 1″

Brow bands Mini – Pony 3/4″ Horse/Draft 1″

Cheeks Mini 5/8″ Pony 3/4″ Cob/Horse/Draft 1″

Nose bands Mini – Pony 3/4″ Cob/Horse/Draft 1″

Here is a video that shows the different strap material and give you an idea of how soft or how stiff it is!