Never had an issue with mine (and a few are 40+ years old) suffering because of cold temperatures. If you are worried about drying out, storing inside would be worse.

Keep 'em dry and they should do fine. Mine live in an unconditioned shop, worst thing I have had happen was some mold growing on one due to excessive dampness caused by two back to back tropical storms. Cold weather won't hurt them at all.

Aaron

The dryness might affect the saddle's leather if you do not treat it with Proofide.
think of the saddle as the organic item that it is. It is really just preserved skin. So you'd expect the dry weather to affect it similarly like your own skin, but to a lesser extent, of course, because of the tanning process. Whether subzero weather would really get it to a "freeze dried" state, and whether that is good or not, I'm not sure. Repeated seasonal subzero freezing/thawing might eventually break down the fibrous struture of the leather and could eventually mean a shorter service life but thst's just my opinions....

When they were alive they just went into the barn when cold, should be fine.

Any considerate cowhand would send his herd west for the winter. I have a dry, warm barn (garage) in California that can accommodate a few extra hides 'til the frost breaks.

My Brooks B17 Imperial has been outside in all kinds of weather, often overnight for the past 10 years. Even in -20C (-4F)

As long as you give it a good layer of proofide or Grangers waterproofing wax every 3-4 years you will be fine.
Untreated leather might get damp which might cause issues when it freezes.

So treat it and keep it dry under a porch or something.

love my B17 when it's cold. feels even more slippery when it's stiffer. on wet days I use a Serfas waterproof cover

I don't believe normal cold weather will hurt leather. I suppose if you got down to unnaturally cold temperatures, approaching absolute zero, it might become brittle enough to shatter; but that's not something you have to worry about.

Riding it while wet, that's another story.

My leather saddles freeze and thaw every year and with no apparent ill affects. This old Ideal lived in Alaska for most of its life, hung up in a garage.


This saddle, Brooks Pro, sat unattended in another garage for years and years. I bought the Cannondale, that the saddle was fitted to, for ten bucks at a yard sale. The saddle was horribly dried out but it came back not too bad with a bit of mink oil treatment(sorry, no picture of the repaired saddle)...



And this is one of my keeper saddles which, again, has froze solid and thawed a dozen times or more, over the years...


The big deal is wet and dry. Don't get the saddle too wet and do not let it dry out. Spend a bunch on Proofhide, if you wish, or just use mink oil. I, personally, cannot see any difference in protection or softening results.

A auto/truck rust preventative for your saddle sounds strange but lanolin in the fluid film has been used to soften leather for centuries.

A few of the saddles I'm not currently riding have developed mold, as I keep the bikes in a barn in a humid climate (upstate NY). I kept the saddles in the freezer for a few weeks, hoping to kill the mold. I took them out this weekend, and they're inside at room temperature. I will see if it helped. If it didn't, someone told me not to worry about the mold, as he claims it doesn't harm the leather. In any case, I didn't worry about the temperature of the freezer harming the leather.

"Extreme cold, freezing, and heat can deactivate spores but it does not kill them. They are resistant to desiccation (drying out). If temperatures go up after a cold spell, spores reactivate and continue to grow. The right conditions for mold growth vary by species."
Apparently 140F temps will though according to one source.

I'd be cautious about brooks in sub-freezing temperatures. They may look safe but if you break through the ice you could end up with wet feet and that's not so pleasant on a bike on a cold day.

OK thanks. Well now I'll fall back on the advice that said it's not harmful. I think you left a verb out of your last sentence, but I guess you mean that heating to 140F might do the trick. Let me see if I can achieve that...

Yes, I was lazy. Sorry.

I have a VO leather saddle which (though used) came with its original accoutrements. One bit was an anti-mold gizmo, just a bit of cardboard probably treated with some sort of antifungal stuff. I leave it in the bag, and my bestest not-on-a-bike-at-the-moment leather saddle hangs out there. Probably not doing any good at this point, but it's a nice superstition.

I did recently put most of my off-bike saddles in a plastic tub with a reasonably snug-fitting lid. Perhaps I should toss in some desiccant bags.

How about a thorough cleaning of the underside with a soap (or saddle soap) using a stiff bristle brush. If that does not solve the problem, how about a minimalist treatment with a fungicide (on the underside only)?

The mold on the outside can be cleaned with saddle soap and a will remain clean by riding the bike, so no fungicide will ever be needed on the outside.

Re-treat both sides with Proofide when done.

Some success here: we had a very...wet year in the NE. A piano that I was waiting for winter to begin restoring got a nice sheen of green mold on the shellac, and it seems to have transferred to a bunch of stuff in the garage (thankfully, the mold doesn't/didn't seem to like the wood the keysticks are made from). I sprayed it with the 'generally accepted' dilute vinegar to clean it, but a week later, the mold was back. I accidentally [over]sprayed it with some Progold bike wash I had lying around (there was a bike with a leather saddle beginning to mold leaning on it), and where it over-sprayed, the mold died and didn't return.

I tested my theory elsewhere in the garage (cloth tape, other saddles, etc...) and it seems to have done it in. That is one product that gets two thumbs up

PS, shoot me an email at wschruba(at)gmail.com to get that camera out to you. It has to go by fedex/UPS--since it has a lithium battery, the USPS won't take it.

I have heard many times, or should I say I have read (on the internet) many times, that that mold on leather does no harm.

Okay, what do I know. But I just cannot believe it. That mold is living off something. It is getting its nutrients somewhere. Do you think it's livinng on thin air? No, I think it is digesting the leather, or something in the leather. That mold, whatever it is, is shortening the lifespan of your saddle. To my mind, this is obvious and not worth debating.

How bad is the damage? That I don't know. Probably not very severe, and probably impossible to measure, but definitely a bad thing rather than a good thing. My suggestion would be that you clean that stuff away asap and when the leather is dry (like, in the winter) wrap it in a plastic bag. If you keep it dry, mold will not grow.

Well, I don't know anything either. My intuition says the same as yours, Rudi. But then again, when we polish metal, we are removing metal. Our bike components and pots and pans don't get noticeably thinner, so maybe mold also eats a negligible amount of leather? I don't know if we can ever answer this, because it's too hard to do a long term controlled experiment with a large enough sample size.

The saddles that were in the freezer for about a month have now spent about two weeks in a damp barn, and they show no signs of mold. Maybe mold goes to sleep when frozen and wakes up when thawed, but that does not appear to have happened. There is neither mold nor scars of any kind. You can't tell there ever had been mold.

I suspect most of what the mold is metabolizing are the oils and waxes used to treat the leather. The structural component of leather is keratin, which is quite stable chemically and hard to metabolize.