Saddles Thread?

[Andre Jute]

So cold this morning, I'm happy to be a bearded chappie, though pre-war is quite a bit before my time. Maybe they're referring to the Vietnam war, or even the invasion of Grenada...

Andre Jute
In the scope of History, what's a few decades this way or that? Everything!

[JWestland]

Hipsters have beards too anyway 

They're not Luddites for refusing Crabon and using steel steeds, but cool

[Danneaux]

Hi All!

Has anyone here tried the Chinese- or Indian-made Brooks copies?

I've seen a few, held a few, but have never tried one firsthand to see how they rode, either initially or over time. Some examples I have seen had rather bright colors (apple green for example, or flame red), but unlike Brooks saddles, which are dyed, these appeared to have been painted -- it was certainly a surface treatment. The black colors seemed the most traditional in terms of surface treatment. I did see one (it looked to be of the same sort) that was worn and on a parked bike. It appeared the dye was indeed a surface paint of some sort and it had worn to plain leather under the rider's use.

David Davies over at the Tandems Pilots & Stokers interest group on Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/103102263066556/499171000126345/?notif_t=group_activity ) mentioned one today and it got the memories flowing.

They seem to be proliferating to a degree as less-expensive alternatives, offered by any number of vendors who are spec'ing them in preferred trim options and private labels, and a few are now showing up occasionally on eBay.

Just curious, though Brooks' B.17 has always worked well for me.

Best,

Dan.

[jags]

my brooks is getting uncomfortable for some reason or it could be my assos  padding thats the problem.i might just try my fizik alanti saddle on the sherpa .
wouldn't saddles give you a pain in the ass trying to get the perfect one.

[Andre Jute]

Has anyone here tried the Chinese- or Indian-made Brooks copies?

I've seen a few, held a few, but have never tried one firsthand to see how they rode, either initially or over time.

I was in my LBS's storeroom a few years ago searching for magic chain links, when I saw one and picked it up. It was huge, possibly bigger than the Brooks B190. The springs and frame were crudely made and crudely painted. The leather was dark tan and much, much thicker than on my pretty sturdy B73. It looked to me like the leather would outlive the metal fittings. It was pretty hard, and the vent holes were not chamfered. The owner, an old chappie, came in looking for something for the bike he was working on. "At the rate you ride, you'd take too long to break it in," he said. "I can order you a Brooks." I wasn't so sure I could break it in at all, it appeared that hard. It was about a third the price of a decent Brooks. Before I bought it even at that price, I remember thinking at the time, I would want to source replacements for the crude fittings, starting with the triple rail to seatpost fitting which is nasty pressed metal even in the official Brooks version and in this Indian version was beyond nasty, definitely dangerous to your skin and clothes.

That one must have been sold because about six months later it was gone from the storeroom. I never saw it again; presumably it sits on a hardly-used bike in a garage somewhere, the fate of so many bikes. There aren't all that many bikes around here on which such a saddle would look right.

Andre Jute

[John Saxby]

Sundry observations:

Thanks, all, for your nice remarks about my airhead.  Hans is tucked away for the winter, but when spring eventually returns, will be pleased to learn of your kind thoughts.

Brooks saddles and African climate/weather?  Like you, Andre, I've seen many old leather saddles with years of maturing in the African dust & sun.  But not so many on the humid lowlands beside the ocean--the high dry plateau country seems kinder, 'cos even when it rains there, everything dries out shorty afterwards.  Others' experience?  Maybe Dave Conroy will have some comments from his Africa trek--or maybe it won't be long enough for the Brooks B17 to mature?  Or maybe he dosed it with Marmite in UK, and not even a high-veld thunderstorm could dampen the leather?

Shoulda read the early posts on this thread--I first read just the most recent posts thought it was about saddles & only today did I learn it was about Marmite.  Well, I dunno about this: I think the emphasis may be misplaced, & that the Unsung Hero of the History of Foggie Olde is really bread and dripping.  Took a while to extricate myself from national mythologies, but in due course I reached my own conclusions about British products of variable viscosity.  I decided that there was, somewhere in that green & pleasant land, a supply of a "base" product (the analogy would be a paint base, for tinting):  in its most viscous form, it's Marmite; barely thinned out it's axle grease; next level of runniness is Castrol 40; very runny indeed, and quite useful, is Dettol.  Not sure what the gaseous variant might be; not sure I really want to find out...

More seriously, Dan and Jawine, your summary of the complexity of sizing saddles to bottoms is, well, fitting.  Who knew??  I sure didn't.  When the foam rubber in the OEM saddle on my Eclipse lost its firmness, I just bought myself a Brooks B17, fiddled and fussed for a few days 'til I got the fore-and-aft tilt right (nose barely elevated from the  horizontal) and the forward adjustment right (maximum forward) and it's been wonderfully comfortable.  Your exchange on fit and the factors involved is illuminating--well done!  Jim Powers' similar piece from 2011 (I believe it was) in "Bike Touring News" is the only comparable piece that I've seen.

Cheers,

J.

[Danneaux]

Nice summation, John; you have a bright future here with us!

All the best,

Dan. (...who wonders if Marmite is the bacon of spreads, making anything it is on "better?")

[JWestland]

Glad it's a good and helpful thread

[Andre Jute]

In South Africa we lived for a while at George on the coast, a place with bits of rainforest because it rains that often. Everyone drove a Rover, because the export models had aluminium panels... Everything that was natural got mouldy; the fruit trees in our orchard were forbidden to us boys because the wood was almost universally too rotten to carry even our light weight. I'm afraid I wasn't into cycling at the time, but into helping Gary Player, who was then the pro at the golf club, turn me into a scratch golfer, so I can't remember what people did with Brooks saddles to protect them from the mold. I imagine they used beeswax or neatsfoot oil, and liberal applications of it, because in those parts everyone knew that once the mold took hold, you couldn't ever again clear it out completely. Plastics were highly prized...

But John is right. I grew up mainly in a desert called the Little Karroo, extremely cold, extremely hot, all in the same day, and dry as a bone, and later lived on the savannah which contains Johannesburg where hard subtropical daily storms soon burned off , and my house at Cape Town was the southernmost house in Africa, where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet, lots of refreshing hurricanes, so mold didn't get started.

Andre Jute

PS "Hans" -- just right for an airhead, a friendly motorcycle...

[Danneaux]

I grew up mainly in a desert called the Little Karroo...

Andre,

When my father was a boy, he corresponded with other kids living there (they met as enthusiasts of the same youth-oriented Western/cowboy magazine) and this writer sent b/w photos and waxed eloquent over the spectacular nature of the Karoo's sunsets. Apropos nothing except you happened to live there for a time...d'you remember the sunsets as well?

Regarding a tendency for leather and Brooks' to mold and mildew in some regions, this was an endemic problem when I lived briefly in the American South (Mississippi). Condensing humidity was a daily given, and some Brooks saddles I examined in a shop there were green with mold on their undersides. Standard procedure prior to a sale was to use a butter knife to scrape off as much of the growth as possible, then wipe-down the rest with white vinegar before handing it over to the customer. It was Understood as a Universal: Leather molds/mildews in such climes. My last saddle came directly from Brooks smelling nicely of leather. The ones in Mississippi smelled like salads...and got worse from there.

...once the mold took hold, you couldn't ever again clear it out completely.

No truer words than that.

All the best,

Dan.

[Danneaux]

Hi All!

As noted here, http://www.thorncycles.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=5839.msg33041;topicseen#msg33041 Brooks will issue a vegan saddle call the Cambium at the end of 2013. It is made with no leather, employing natural rubber and organic cotton instead. They claim it will offer much of the flexibility of leather, "...offering the legendary Brooks 'hammock' comfort, quality and performance with the ease of a modern saddle, i.e., waterproof, maintenance-free and ready to ride." They remind readers that "...Brooks has used a variety of materials with which to construct their famous saddles. Not only cows, but also horses and even crocodiles have been used, but not only natural hides".

For many decades, my father's 1938 Hercules coaster-brake bike sported a Brooks-style sprung saddle with a cover made of rubber. As a child, we often wondered if it was indeed a Brooks, but by then the surface had pebbled to the point where we could no longer discern a logo. By the time I was 8, large chunks had fallen out and it had to be replaced with something more contemporary. Given its infrequent use,  that was a mattress saddle, covered with premium vinyl over padding over a steel base suspended on two large springs at the rear. I manage a very hilly 67mi/108km on it one day and found myself wishing very hard for the aged rubber MaybeBrooks.

Best,

Dan. (...who is still shaking his head over a cotton-and rubber Brooks, but hopes it will be okay)

[John Saxby]

Andre, here's a foto of the back yard of friends we were visiting in Prince Albert in Dec 2005--foto taken in Sept 2005. Looking South towards the Swartburg Mtns in the background, your home in the Karroo might be just a ways over the crest and then SE.  I put this onto my desktop now and again, when we start to get colour-deprived around mid-late-Feb....

J.

[ianshearin]

As a child, we often wondered if it was indeed a Brooks, but by then the surface had pebbled to the point where we could no longer discern a logo. By the time I was 8, large chunks had fallen out and it had to be replaced with something more contemporary.

Why am I not surprised that child grew up to be Dan.....

 

[Andre Jute]

When my father was a boy, he corresponded with other kids living there (they met as enthusiasts of the same youth-oriented Western/cowboy magazine) and this writer sent b/w photos and waxed eloquent over the spectacular nature of the Karoo's sunsets. Apropos nothing except you happened to live there for a time...d'you remember the sunsets as well?

First of all, a geography lesson. The area I grew up in is called the Little Karroo for a reason, there is also a larger desert called just the Karroo. My hometown was Oudtshoorn, world capital of ostriches. I have my old ostrich-skin cigar case, now in use as a pencil case, on my desk here. As a boy I actually raced ostriches, and on one occasion scooped up the intestines of a handler at the races who got in front of an ostrich's four-inch claw when he should have been behind it, and dropped his guts back in the cavity, keeping his stomach closed until the truck arrived to take him to the hospital. He survived, though he walked skew.

Indeed I remember the sunsets vividly. They were, well, vivid. It's the red dust in the sky which makes the Karroo sunsets so spectacular. It's a place of extremes.

Andre Jute

[Andre Jute]

Andre, here's a foto of the back yard of friends we were visiting in Prince Albert in Dec 2005--foto taken in Sept 2005. Looking South towards the Swartburg Mtns in the background, your home in the Karroo might be just a ways over the crest and then SE.  I put this onto my desktop now and again, when we start to get colour-deprived around mid-late-Feb....

I'd say that fellow is looking straight towards Oudtshoorn, where I was born, about 39km through the mountain.

That's a very misleading photo of the Karroo. There's a river nearby, not shown, and probably pumped water as well, and those colourful flowers come out at most for a fortnight every year! But yeah, like most deserts, the Karroo has its surprising corners.

In fact, my mother used to go annually up to another desert, the Namaqua, and camp there in the sand to every horizon, sometimes for two or three weeks, and then one morning the sand, to every horizon, would be a riot of these vivid magentas and deep yellows and oranges and reds and green, totally covered, the desert just disappeared. But you had to be there when it happened, because the next it would all be gone; the plants had reserves for only the one day's showing before disappearing under the sand for another year.

Obligatory on-topic comment: Once, when there was snow on the Prince Albrecht Pass, a friend and I cycled down from the top of the mountain into Prince Albrecht, and then had to find a friendly housewife to give us a meal and a bed until a truck could make it over the mountain to fetch us back. We might have been 10 and 11. The women who took us in told my mother she would have kept us if she could. we were so well mannered. The older brother who obligingly drove the bikes to the top of the mountain got dressed down for it; his excuse was that he thought we intended riding down the other side of the mountain, back home. Those were carefree days, growing up in the countryside; by the time we were fourteen, we were flying a Tiger Moth we rebuilt, probably none too well, all over the countryside; plenty of flat places to land if spark plugs needed cleaning, and the guys at the local Air Force base were always happy to fuel us compliments of the taxpayer...

Thanks for the refreshing photograph. I've grabbed it as reference for a watercolour; drop the name of your friends who took to andrejute at coolmainpress dot com so I can give them a proper credit, or, if you properly don't want to give their name to a stranger,  I'll just credit them as "Photo by friends of John Saxby".

Andre Jute