May I solicit some views on my thoughts re a leather saddle?
Brooks of course. But I have a mental problem with leather being out in all sorts of nasty weather when I am away on a long long tour.
I know it will be "proofed" and I know they sell nice wee care kits but I still think it will suffer from snow ice and hot sun variations.
Someone put me right on this please
First of all, I agree with Jawine, but more so. I grew up in Africa, where all the bicycles had Brooks saddles, where the sun and the rain were fierce, where I never saw a saddle cover (what's that? what sort of a rooinek* newbie would want such a thing?), and where Brooks saddles routinely outlived their owners.
For heavens sake, it's a great big piece of horsy leather. The hunt and suchlike would never dream of covering up their saddles and other leather gear.
All that said, I have a Brooks cover and use it, not because I fear riding the B73 wet would ruin it -- that's what the tensioning screw is for! -- but because I don't want to have to deal with mold, which once started can be very persistent in leather.
A couple of other points that may not be obvious.
You may decide to soak your saddle in neatsfoot oil to break it in. I did, as related elsewhere on this forum. Whether you soak it in neatsfoot or motor oil or your wife's virgin olive oil or whatever you fancy, or just rub on Proofide, don't for a moment believe the protection of that little soaking goes deeper than the epidermis. My B73 (coil spring at each corner) was pretty comfortable out of the box, so I soaked in neatsfoot oil very briefly. But I ride in street clothes and my keychain has caught the saddle a couple of times, and I was amazed to see in the light scratch how little the neatsfoot and Proofide once a year since then have penetrated.
I don't think it matters what you use to weatherproof your saddle, or even whether you use anything at all. Most of those saddles that lasted forever in Africa got zero maintenance, no wax whatsoever, and they mostly looked good with it. A good leather saddle has to be really, really, really abused before it even looks tacky, and appalling cruelties have to be performed on it before it stops functioning. (Chalo Colina, the famous Boeing machinist and bike mechanic in Austin, Texas -- he's the guy who designed the famous 48 spoke Rohloff wheel and drilling scheme --, weighs 350 pounds and up. There's a photo on the net somewhere of an extension he's welded onto the stretching bolt... The leather of the saddle looks damned good.) And when it does stop functioning, it is more often because metal parts rusted through than because the leather was too stretched or torn to work any longer. Check what Brooks offers as spares: it's mainly the metal bits. All this worry about the leather is misdirected; we should worry about crappy Italian chrome plating or painting on our Brooks's metal bits, not the leather, which Italians do a great deal better than they do metal preparation.
A pristine Brooks saddle with zero discolouration (and that counts double if it is honey, which stains if you glance at it) and zero scratches is the mark of a poser.
A Brooks saddle is a tool, meant to be used, not jewellery.
Andre Jute
*rooinek = literally "red neck", sunburned, shorthand for a Brit just off the ship, who'd never seen sunshine like this before
