Saddle refurbishing question
 

I’ve seen a few threads, and many posts about folks recovering saddles. Many excellent examples but all seem to be missing the logo. I really like the logos and would love to have them if I’m going to do the work to refinish a saddle.

I’ve looked pretty thoroughly through the forum and other places as well. But I haven’t been able to find any info on how they made saddles back in the day. Is it painted with a stencil, a sticker, some sort of stamp? Does anyone know? If I knew how, maybe I could find a way to recreate it! Has anyone tried? What’s the skinny?

Happy holidays!
-Thomas

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...9bb054ae0.jpeg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...be94c7b8f.jpeg

One way is stencil/paint - right paint is important
Other folks claim to do it with "heat transfer vinyl" I can't imagine they hold up in the long term https://www.etsy.com/listing/9911560...iron-on-decal?

ahh Honda motorcycles.. one of my first loves.

This is a great instructional video. Thank you for showing me!

They are color stamps if the material on which the logo is printed is uniform. Color and pressure stamps are used if the logo is below the material plane.
Pressure stamps only for Brooks saddles.
Sono stampi a colore se il materiale dove eseguito il logo è uniforme. Colore e pressione se il logo e sotto il piano del materiale.
Solo pressione per le selle Brooks.

Brooks isn't the only one who does/did pressure stamps. Here are a few from https://www.rhmsaddles.com/
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...eabc03dd64.jpg
Just a few pics from Rudi's website

@rhm hasn't posted here in awhile, but he's the master of releathering saddles. https://www.rhmsaddles.com/

Taking the Concor Supercorsa as an example, how would you create a stencil with all the tiny a, e and o characters?

Surely this is not how it would be done in the factory.

That is the hard part about stencils (and vinyl graphics) you have to carefully "weed" out the parts of the stencil you don't want. Getting the tiny parts out from the inside of a, e, o, etc letters is one of the hardest parts.

Agreed this is not how they would have been done in the factory. Out of curiosity I watched a bunch of "saddle manufacturing" videos. I did not find one that showed graphics being applied but did see, repeatedly in multiple videos that the graphics were already on flat cutout materials that got formed into the saddle. Based on that my guess is most are direct printing (likely by various methods) on the flat pieces.

There is a shot in this video at 0:55 of something being applied with a silk screen:

Silk screen is a good idea. Same with marking it while laid flat. My other thought was a stamp that I could dip in paint and press it.

Block Printing
 

That would be "block printing", you carve the reverse image into a block of linoleum or wood and print using ink.

Yes yes, the translator betrayed, I meant that for the Brooks the stamp was only pressed
Si si, il traduttore a tradito, intendevo che per le Brooks il timbro era solo pressato