Have any of you guys used the 'Oil Soak' method's described in Sheldon Browns article on Leather Saddles?
Yes, I soaked my B73 in neatsfoot oil. The first thing to note is that the oil will change the colour. My honey-coloured saddle came out a mid-brown but Sheldon had already written to me that I should expect a colour change with use (Sheldon's last letter before his death was to me, though probably not on this subject). This is not the same "brown" as you can buy from Brooks (that's much darker), but more of a chestnut brown, a medium tan as it is technically called in the shoe trade.
The method I used was to place a baking pan on the kitchen counter, place the saddle in it upside down, and pour in a stable-size can of neatsfoot oil. The neatsfoot oil ran through the holes in the saddle and over the edges and quickly coated both sides. I left the saddle in for 20 minutes and then took it out. I drained the pan, wiped it dry, and put the saddle back in, right side up, to use the pan as a drip tray. After 24 hours I wiped the top of the saddle with a soft cloth. Then I fitted the saddle to my bike and, wearing black track suit bottoms, went out riding.
I was warned by the usual abusive clowns on RBT that my saddle would overstretch and be ruined, and a few gloated that the same treatment I applied to my Brooks handlebar grips would leave my hands greasy. (It apparently never occurred these fellows that I routinely cycle in leather dress gloves, summer and winter, and never put my skin on the handlebar grips.)
The results have been entirely beneficial. The B73 is basically a B66 or 67 (I can never remember which of those is the men's saddle) with a coil spring at each corner, often said to be the most comfortable Brooks saddle straight out of the box, but spurned by the "experts" because it is supposedly sways from side to side. It's BS. I weigh 215 pounds, I'm a masher not a spinner, and I have a sense of orientation of all my body parts finely developed in motor racing, stunt flying and offshore speedboats, as well as on polo ponies, where balance is everything. The B73 doesn't sway on its springs. I found it comfortable enough out of the box but the neatsfoot oil made a huge difference in helping shape the leather to my sit bones, and thus to my comfort, albeit not as quickly as I had been told or hoped. We're talking about several hundred miles before you feel, suddenly, that your saddle has taken a big step.
Can you speed up the process further? Should you? In twenty minutes my saddle wasn't soaked through, nowhere near. In fact, if you scratch the underside of my saddle with a fingernail, the thin layer of neatsfoot comes off and you see bright natural colour leather. So you could leave the saddle in the neatsfoot longer, forty minutes or an hour. I haven't tried it. I wouldn't advise anyone to be in too much of a hurry to try it.
So far, in something over 3000 miles since my Brooks saddle assumed the shape of my ischial tuberosities, I have made less than a turn of tightening adjustment, and none in the last 18 months, so the leather hasn't been unduly stretched. I'm a very long way from having to lace the saddle to return its shape. Visually, from the side, my saddle has a flat top, and neither by eye nor by touch can the softening be found, but my bum knows the difference. (Not as big an improvement as people on B17s and other unsprung Brooks saddles claim, but then my saddle was comfortable out of the box, and is well-sprung, which I think takes care of micro vibrations more than of the bigger bumps, for which the hammock design of the leather is responsible. It should also be noted that I ride on low pressure balloons, 60mm Big Apples, so the ride is naturally smooth to start with. But when I put my B73 on an unforgivingly stiff ali bike with unforgivingly harsh Marathon Plus tyres, the saddle was a 100% improvement over an expensive Selle Royale gel job, a Terry anatomic design, and of course over the narrow "sporting" saddles that various bikes came with. That's probably the true test.)
Neatsfoot oil is cheap enough, and doesn't make the leather nasty to clothes or hands, and it is proven by use in stables. Most important, it doesn't stop you using Brooks Proofide on the topside for routine maintenance, which is what I do once a year (I use very little). But Sheldon thought using motor oil was equally good and reported that a friend of his soaked his Brooks saddles in clean motor oil for 24 hours for a much quicker break-in. I imagine the leather would come out pretty black. A saddle soaked in motor oil mustn't be expected to last forever, it seems, as the friend was said to have done this to many saddles.
The photo shows four colours of "brown" leather. The handlebar bag and the mixte rail protectors are both "light tan", the saddle is "medium tan" or "mid-brown" or even "chestnut", the rear saddlebag is "brown". This is what a honey Brooks saddle soaked in neatsfoot oil looks like. The darker shade on top is from use. Notice that 20 minutes of neatsfoot soak and perhaps three very light layers of Proofide to the top in three years have not penetrated far, as can be seen from the fact that the nose of the saddle lighten perceptibly with the scuffing of use.
Andre jute
