I laced up my Brooks
 

My Brooks B17 has begun to rub me a little on the thighs, from the saddle's side side skirts flaring up and out when sitting on it.

So I punched 2 holes near the bottom edge of each skirt and put a cable tie through the holes and around the seat rails. This worked well, and it firmed up the saddle a bit.

Then yesterday while accelerating hard from a traffic light, I felt something on the saddle go <pop>. One of the cable ties had snapped! Now cable ties are very strong, so the tension from the saddle sides must be enormous.

I replaced the cable ties with thicker ones and laced them around the seat post instead of the saddle rail. This has improved the shape, pulling the side skirts down and in instead of just in.

The "traditional" method for lacing a Brooks is to use
leather. This is one as shown at www.wallbike.com
http://www.wallbike.com/content/JPG/b17lace2.jpg

Marty

^^ pretty.

What does the leather lacing attach to?

My impression was that it is laced from one side all the way to the other. So the lacing pulls the sides in toward each other.

My Brooks came with punched holes along the bottom edge. It was a bit distorted. It came on a nice Bob Jackson bike from the 1960s. I laced it and soaked it, got it into the shape I wanted, let it dry, and liberally coated it with Brooks Proofhide. That was about 1975 and it is still here. Just across the room in a box. Just got my wife to move from it to a modern saddle.

My very first trial was lacing these sides together with a cable tie, but the middle works of the seat post is really in the way. It was also asymmetrical, due to the sides not being equally stiff. I got it to work somehow, then moved on to the described OP.