Help! Choosing first Weymouth and bradoon..!

tobiano1984

tobiano1984

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Someone please help! I need to buy double bridle bits, which is a new experience. And the choice is somewhat overwhelming..!
My horse is fairly straightforward and unfussy, the only real consideration is that he is a cob with a fat tongue. He's very responsive and fairly sensitive mouthed, although incredibly powerful. Conformation wise he's best likened to an Iberian (trainers words, not mine!)

He's been ridden in a low port straight Pelham for showing, and otherwise in a French link eggbutt or a Nathe snaffle.

Eventually I'd like to get a Lorenzini titanium double set but I want to play around a bit first and work out what suits him. My trainer hasn't been that helpful, saying Sprenger is the way forward - I can't afford to spend that much on 'trying bits out'!

So - bradoon - I've pretty much worked out that I want an eggbutt bradoon with a lozenge.

Weymouth is the confusing part - what kind of port, tilted mouthpiece or not, long or short shanks, fixed shanks or not?!

Someone please help! And advise any brands I can try just to start with. I don't want to hire a bit as would want to give it longer than a month to try out.

And sizing - I see various theories on this, having the bradoon a size bigger etc. He fits a 5.25" eggbutt snaffle but both the Nathe (straight bar and loose ring) and his straight Pelham are 5.5" and fit well...what do you think?

Thanks in advance for shedding any light on this!
 
Personally, I would go with a mouthpiece similar to his pelham in the first instance, and would go 5.5" same as his pelham too. When I have been trying a few different weymouths, I have got SS bits, rather than branded "special" bits. But a lot of the weymouths can be trialed from http://www.horsebitbank.com/

I had some very old Sprenger bits that had sat unused in my tack room for over a decade before I wanted to try my mare in a double. As it turned out, she seems to rather like the Sprenger bits - which is fortunate for me!! ;)

Bizarrely, although my mare has always been ridden in a double jointed snaffle up until going into the double, she seems to much prefer the single jointed bradoon with the double. Horses hey!!
 
I think if you aren't happy to hire bits to begin with, I'd start with something really simple. Either a similar mouthpiece to your pelham in stainless as UTR says, or something like the NS slimma if you're feeling a bit more spendy. You'd be able to sell on a NS weymouth no problem if it didn't suit in the end, but a basic SS weymouth will be cheap to start with and probably quite readily accepted by your horse. I don't really see much point to a sliding mouthpiece on your weymouth, most are fixed these days.

I use exactly the same bradoon as my normal snaffle, only a bit thinner & with small rings as she has an 18mm KK on her snaffle bridle. Your normal french link might already be thin enough to not fill his mouth up too much, so if you can make that work in the short term, you'll be reducing the amount of changes that you are making, and it will be easier to gauge his reaction to each element.

If I were you, I'd go cheap and cheerful to start with, train on for a month or 2 and then you'll have an idea of what works and what doesn't. Then you can go down the hire/borrowing route if you need something more unusual to get a good result. I've ended up with a backwards tilted port as it happens, but I wouldn't have selected that straight away without having started from a position of no bells & whistles ;)

Oh, and re sizing, i find that different shapes & brands sit differently, so theory can go completely out of the window there. You might need a bit of trial and error.
 
Thanks so much, this is all really helpful. I'm keeping an eye out for secondhand fancy brands to try but will look at getting some cheaper ones to start with.
 
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