Identify Ideale saddle
 

I grabbed this Ideale saddle off of craiglist for cheap the other day. As you can see it's a bit deformed, with a prominent ridge running along left of the midline. The leather doesn't feel too bad but it could use a fair amount of conditioning. This is my first Ideale saddle and I have no clue what model it would be. The writing on the sides of the saddle has been well worn off. Could this be refurbished to be ridable again? Worth anything if I decide it's not for me? I've been lurking the forums but this is my 1st post, hopefully i'm in the right spot.
http://i55.tinypic.com/zvzcyf.jpg
http://i54.tinypic.com/zl6i4l.jpg
http://i53.tinypic.com/16kp83l.jpg

Yes your in the right place, I'm more of an X-brooks man so I don't know about ideale. Most saddles have numbers stamped on the underside or in the frame. As far as care goes look for a feed and tack place that sells horse saddles and they know all about leather, leather repair, dying and more than I care. Does it have an adjustable nose on the front of the frame? Need picture of underside.

There are a lot of Ideale saddles for sale on Ebay that you can compare yours to.

Yeah, it does have an adjuster near the nose. Based on the Ebay listings it looks like this is the 90 model.

I think it looks like a model 90 also. Sure has taken on a "set" from the previous owner's butt. Heck yes it's worth restoring and using, if the deformation doesn't play heck with your fromunder. Has the nose adjuster been tightened at all? Maybe you can loosen it up a bit, condition the leather with proofide and somehow pull it back into a more symmetrical shape.

Mines a Model 90 TB and looks similar. Although, all the Ideale's I've seen have a large model stamp on the side and it seems hard to imagine that the stamp could be completely worn away. I've seen an old scan of an Ideale catalog that had something like 20 models in it. Some looked very similar.
http://i700.photobucket.com/albums/w..._Ideale002.jpg

I can kind of see the stamp on the side of my saddle but most of it has been worn away....

Maybe a stupid question but what way will I have to turn the bolt to loosen it? I cant figure it out visually and I don't want to tighten accidentally.

It shouldn't matter a whole lot. Just see if you can get the bolt moving. If the nose cap looks like it's moving away from the rear of the saddle, go the other way. You're going to have to tighten it back up anyway after you treat it so, remember where the bolt is situated now in relation to the nut. I would think, but not sure without one sitting in front of me , that ...with the nose of the saddle pointing toward you, move the not clockwise on the bolt and that should be tightening the saddle, but maybe not. Experiment. It won't hurt the saddle, as long as you don't over-do it.