Maintaining that leather saddle
 

How do I...? I'm thinking maybe glove oil or veggie oil?

Try Brooks Proofide.

Follow the Brooks instructions. And just buy the proofide. It's absurdly overpriced, but you'll use so little of it you won't care.

I've lost more of it than I've used.

I use Dr. Jackson's Hide Rejuvenator with great success. It's about $10 and sold at any Tandy Leather Factory store around the country, or order it online.

There's not much to it. Buy some Proofhide (I'm still on my first tin, 12 years later), follow the directions.

If it looks like the saddle's going to get wet, put on a cover. A couple of plastic grocery bags will do if you're not riding, or http://www.lickbike.com/productpage....9;1005-00' if you're riding and dripping sweat.

30 years ago I used a tin of proofide, and the home oven set at 100 F degree warm temperature .
slathered a big dollop of the Brooks treatment in the under-side of the saddle .
and put it in upside down on some aluminum foil in a cookie sheet
the warmth melted the waxes in the proofide ,
and the warm leather soaked it up like a sponge , let it virtually saturate the leather.

Did little to it since, though when its wet out , I put a plastic bag over the saddle ,
and have toured for weeks in wet weather
with the poly bag over the saddle, and it has been fine..
no reason to take poly off then, since I Got rain gear over-trousers on anyhow..

in fact since thefts of the saddles have been mentioned ,
the plastic bags have an added advantage.. hiding the thing.

I use clear Kiwi shoe polish.Works on my leather shoes.

Proofide, if you want to go "factory issue" everything.
SnoSeal, if you have a local shoe/boot store and want to save money.
Obenauf's LP, if you have a local tack & stable and want to have enough to care for saddles from now until the apocalypse.

They're all similar formulation.

Ovenauf's LP https://www.obenaufs.com/index.php?r...tegory&path=20 and a 99 cent shower cap

The first thing that you want to do is to make every effort to always keep your seat clean both before and after riding. Next try using a high quality leather conditioner like Proofide leather conditioner . Seal the saddle with the leather conditioner and make sure that it's stored in a clean, safe, well ventilate & dry area when not in use and your leather seat should last you for the life of your bike.

I have a small tin or proofhide I use once a year whether it needs it or not, and a keep shower caps with my tools and patch kits.

Another Kiwi shoe polish guy here.

It's what I have in the closet, and it works fine. I use the brown, on my brown Brooks.

Veggie oil will go rancid after a spell. Hard lesson learned on my favorite baseball glove as a kid. :p The suggestion about putting the saddle up-side-down in the oven w/Proofhide on the underside will certainly soak the leather. Then just maintain the exposed side, keep it covered and never leave it on your bike unattended for more than 5 mins. I know from experience. :notamused:

You might want to look at this article
http://www.minnehahabags.com/2009/02...s-for-leather/

Brooks proofide and Kiwi...but not the shoe polish! get the saddle soap, meant for leather horse saddles.

Thanks for that.

I gotta remember the warming part.

Honestly, for the $8.50 the proofide cost me, it seems worth it for a purpose-made product. I don't expect I'll have to buy more for a long, long time.

Different leather treatments for different purposes. Baseball glove oil helps keep leather supple, but will soften it too much for saddle purposes (lowering the saddle's life expectancy), and does not waterproof. Sno-seal mentioned above appears to be a waterproofing agent that won't necessarily condition the leather to prevent it from drying out and cracking.

Many of the other solutions are in between. Most shoe conditioners should take care of the waterproofing and conditioning, but may soften the leather too much.

I imagine there are other brands of products that would be just as appropriate as Proofide - I would be looking mainly at treatments intended for horse saddles - but the $5 or so (every 5+ years) that I might save is not worth the research time.

As for heating, blah blah blah...my thought is that while Brooks has a vested interest in selling Proofide, they don't have much interest in giving bad maintenance advice, so I'm just going to go with the directions included with the saddle. Oil the underside once, and leave on. Oil the top side every few months and wipe off.

So I'm thinking this should be like an overnight thing, right?

I use Snoseal on both my Brooks and it has worked great. I usually apply a coat to the top and bottom every 6 months after heating up the leather by leaving it in the sun or with a brought light on it (upside down) so it softens to absorb the compound. My oldest Brooks is 5 years old and this is the first year I needed to give a couple of turns on the adjusting bolt to firm it up. I also laced up the sides for further firmness.

Did you put some veg in the oven too fietsbob? :roflmao2:

Can be, although maybe not. When I park outside at work, the saddle gets toasty in the mid-day sun. Take the Proofide out on the way to lunch, rub some in, and it's all dissolved and absorbed by the end of the day. Buff with your choice of rag or bike shorts. :/)

Aardvark saddle cover, $6-10.

I think using proofide is a good call. The challenging thing is when it comes to tensioning. How tight do you make it once it's worn in? Brooks gives absolutely no guidelines or instruction on this.

The best bet is to take your tensioning wrench and throw it away, my 15 year old saddle has only had about two complete turns in all that time.

Edit: I do have a bout 4 wrenches, maybe I can make some earrings for the Mrs...

Use oil and you may be looking for that wrench. The advantage of the proofide treatment is that the wax doesn't expand the leather under tension. Some people use water or oil to speed up the break-in, but it seems risky.

You aren't the first person I've heard take this stance. Sheldon Brown states "In almost every case that I know of where someone has tried to adjust the tension with this nut, the saddle has been ruined. My advice is to leave it alone."

However, this is sort of senseless to me. Leather necessarily stretches over time with load. I'm not a big guy (145#), but I ride 5-6000 mi/year. When I start feeling like the saddle is no longer taught enough to carry my weight through my sit bones, I tension it. I've done it twice. The first time was after probably 3000 miles, the second probably a slightly shorter interval, but I made a much smaller adjustment that time. The first time there was essentially no resistance on the nut for the entire first 2 revolutions of the nut. After doing a bit beyond that, the saddle was markedly more comfortable.

I should state that I follow the 'letter of the law' when it comes to Brooks saddle maintenance, using proofide in the appropriate amounts, techniques, intervals, etc.

I'm not sure why this prudish approach to saddle tensioning is so prevalent. That being said, I'm not at all confident that I'm doing it the right way.