Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Like anything - you get the cheapest sissor snaps and they will break 
and come open. If you don't check them often - like every time you ride, 
guess when it will happen?

Most are brass. Brass is soft. Two things can happen, the knob on that 
allows them to swivle will wear off and the snap will just pop off the 
post. It doesn't take that long for brass.Crud gets into the workings 
and causes them not to close well. Keep them clean and keep a little 
lubricant on them.

Myself I perfer stainless steel snaps of any kind. They are stong, don't 
eaisly break and are generally made better.

I've only had a sissor snap fail once in 15 years and when I looked at 
it I determined it was because I didn't pay attention to it. Now I check 
them every time I ride, just like I check the girth and billets every 
time I ride. I replace rein snaps often - any metal will fatigue and 
fail. Use good quality (stainless steel works best), keep them clean, 
replace one when it shows the slightest sign of wear and they should 
work fine.

Truman

Dbeverly4@xxxxxxx wrote:

> I had a very startling experience at the 20 Mule Team ride last 
> weekend involving scissor snaps. My rookie horse, Jazz, doing his 2nd 
> ride with me wanted to GO first thing in the morning and got really 
> annoyed with me for insisting on some sort of sane pace so he started 
> shaking his head really hard up and down (not flipping it up high, but 
> just sort of nodding really hard). The dang snaps on BOTH reins opened 
> up!!! There I was trotting along going faster and faster with no reins 
> anymore. I ended up reaching down and grabbing the martingale which 
> was clipped to his halter and was able to stop him that way (my 
> Guardian angel must have stepped in on this one). I resnapped the 
> reins and couldn't find a thing wrong with them, the snaps weren't 
> even loose. I have no idea how they both managed to come undone at 
> once. What a fluke!
>
> A few miles later the head thing was getting worse and worse so I 
> finally decided to try taking the bit out and riding in the halter 
> (aaack!). Well, the minute the bit was gone Jazz returned to his 
> normal good boy self and the rest of the ride was very pleasant. I'm 
> having an equine dentist out this week to give him a good going over 
> because something obviously was wrong in his mouth.
>
> No more scissor snaps for me and maybe no more bits for Jazz! I bought 
> him a brand new S hack to try while we work out the mouth issue :)
>
> Aren't new horses fun!??? =:O
>
> Sylvia



--

“It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how 
smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong” Richard 
Feynman



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