Ouch! My Brooks!
 

So I discovered this damage to the fairly new B67 on my around towner bike today. I'm not sure how it happened, maybe a clumsy drop against something sharp? I hope it's not vandalism. The cut looks fairly deep. The back rail of the saddle frame is directly under the area. I was thinking all I can do is trim away the avulsed leather material and treat it with some leather cream. I use Obenaufs. I don't want the tear to spread and cause the seat to sag. :(

Wow, it must have hit something very hard to do that kind of deep damage. Vandalism is definitely something that might have happened to your saddle as it looks like the trauma was applied more to the top of the saddle and not the exposed side edges.....

Ouch.

Upside: Much less desirable to saddle thieves; easily identified.

But yeah. Ouch.

Rub some shoe polish into the effected area and be done with it.

Ugly, but I don't think it'll cause further problems. I've seen a lot of ruined saddles, and that's not where they fail. Most failures start at either the side rivets on the nose or the outer rivets on the cantle plate. I'd take a very sharp knife (x-acto knife, razor blade, etc) and cut off any loose burrs, then polish and burnish as Velognome described.

I did the same thing on a brand new pair of safety shoes on the first day I wore them to work. Took a big chunk off the top of the toe of one shoe. I have no idea how it happened. But I did as was suggested here, trimmed off the loose edges and rubbed some black shoe polish into the bare leather. There is still a scar, but much less noticeable, and the leather is protected.

It's a seat you put you a$$ on it whats the big deal?

Did some leather work years ago, that's definitely caused by something sharp (vs rough). If you leaned it on its left side against some kind of railing, you might have caught some kind of support. The thing that makes me think not knife is there not being a whole lot of damage, and its centralized nature.

Treat it and polish it. It now has character.

M.

I'm guess it tipped over and hit something, and someone picked it up...

If all the leather is there, that is: peeled up or pushed over, why not straighten it all out and back in place, and super-glue it back down?
It really doesn't matter though, either way, just ride it.

Sadly, looks to me like someone whacked it with a sharp implement. If it was mine i'd press some shoe-goo into the split...may not look great but I think it would stablize it and stop it from spreading.

It doesn't take long for marks like that to appear on any of my new Brooks saddles. Most were (accidentally) self-inflicted, or caused when a strong wind blew over the bike that had been propped up against something else.

I've done exactly this before. A couple applications black shoe polish, really rubbing it in and letting it sit, got the damaged part to the right color.

I've also done the same thing with a nice pair of black dress shoes I scraped up really badly in a motorcycle crash. Fortunately for the rest of my body, I was wearing a snowmobile suit over my monkey suit when I went down.

That adds character to the saddle. You need to come up with a good story, perhaps a close scrape with a zombie, a bear or something.

+1.......removing material will not make it stronger, so leave it. Only if the current damage will lead to more damage would I remove any leather.

Bike fell over.

I would take a few sutures with cat gut and a graft of skin taken from the inside of your upper thigh.
Or.....the shoe polish thing.

Thanks for the tips everyone. Rootboy, I love my Brooks saddles, but not that much. I glued down the peeled up flap with some flexible cement type stuff. I don't have any black shoe polish, I don't really care about matching the color so maybe I'll just rub some Obenaufs into the rest of the scrape.

+1 on gluing the bits back. Only I would recommend using Shoe Goo instead of superglue. Shoe Goo flexes and should keep anything from getting into the leather (rot?).

You can also say it is now wabi sabi.

M.

Super glue works very well with leather, and other natural stuff, like skin, that's why I recommended it. Not much flexing going on over the cantle.

^I like that! Reminds me of some steel frames restored with the "patina" intact and rust neutralized.

Good to know thanks!