![]() ![]() ![]() He sold his house and purchased land in Sheridan, Wyoming where he built a shop and hired his first employee. Word got around the western horse circuit that Balding’s bits were the best that money could buy. “The first 10 years was very hand to mouth wages,” he says, “then I got into Reining and that’s when it took off.”īalding’s break came in 1998 when a multiple winner of American Quarter Horse Association World Championships, started using his bits. He used the opportunities to sell his bits and to glean feedback from riders. To spread the word about his products, he rented booths at horse shows. “I was constantly trying to figure out what was going to be my look.” “Copying another bit never occurred to me,” he says. Using bits of scrap metal his business Tom Balding Bits and Spurs was born. He went to work in his shop, a mobile home salvaged from the dump, and began designing bits. Instantly, it became clear-his calling in the horse industry would include his welding skills. ![]() In 1984 a woman asked him to fix a broken bit. He tried shoeing horses, he attempted leatherwork, but neither seemed to be the right fit. Ranching was a hard way to make a living. “On the ranch we’d go out riding at 20 below,” he says, “I was hooked.” Then he went to work for a local rancher stacking hay, fixing fence and tending to cattle. He bought a young colt and a horse training book. He packed his vehicle and drove until he came to Wyoming. “I looked over the valley one night at sunset and had an epiphany,” he says, “I saw a neighbor’s horse in a pen and decided I wanted to own a horse, but decided it had to be somewhere it wouldn’t have to be in a pen.” The company welded parts for Hobie Cat sail boats, aluminum backpack frames and other custom parts.īusiness was good, but by 1980, he was burnt out. By Monday, I left my job and started my first business at 23 years old,” he reminisces. “One Friday afternoon, I was having a conversation with someone about starting my own business. “I was a really good employee while working for each company, but I was restless and moved from job to job,” he explains.īefore long, Baldwin reached a fork in the road. He excelled as a craftsman, but was never content. “There was an endless amount of work available and it paid really good,” he says. His first fulltime welding job was for Hooker Headers, a race car exhaust system company and by age 21, he was certified to weld government aircraft. He began experimenting with his father’s acetylene cutting torch and soon learned of an opening at a local welding shop. His route took him past a small welding shop, “I saw this guy welding and he sparked an interest,” he says. Though his father was a welder and his younger brother eventually became a metal shop teacher, it was Baldwin’s teenage newspaper route that ignited an interest in welding. Raised in a family that enjoyed the outdoors, but one that had no interaction with horses, he never imagined he would one day be known around the world as a master craftsman, specializing in bits and spurs. Forks in the road have lured him from his birthplace in Southern California to the open skies of Sheridan, Wyoming and from steady full time employment to the owner of not one, but two successful businesses. Life, for Tom Balding, is about forks in the road.įorks in the road have led him from hot rods, to aerospace, sailboats and eventually, to horses. ![]()
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