There's a ton of conflicting information out there, so I'm not going to
pretend this is gospel. That being said, I've had a half dozen Brooks
saddles of varying ages from new to 40 years old, and have even re-covered
two Brooks Professional saddles with new custom formed tops.
Basically, your new B17 has leather that is smooth, strong, and relatively
rigid. For best service life, you want it to stay that way, but conform to
your backside. The best bet is to use a damp cloth over the rear of the
saddle, and let it sit there for an hour or two until the leather is damp
too. It will still be fairly stiff, but will be a lot more conformable and
flexible than the dry leather of the nose and midsection. Then go out and
ride it until you start to get some indentations in the sit bone area. Once
it's comfortable, stop riding, and let it dry for a day or two. You can
then give it a light coat of proofhide or other dressing. You now have a
fully broken-in saddle that should last for years. (The B17 is kind of
thin, so it's not going to last you decades like a Professional, or some of
the older B17s from the 60s)
The idea behind dressings like Proofhide or Obenauf's is to replace some of
the oils and fats that were originally worked into the leather during the
tanning process, but that are continually lost to oxidation / evaporation /
crosslinking to various varnishes, etc. If you don't use any dressing,
eventually the leather will dry out, harden, shrink, and crack.
(Eventually means years or maybe even decades.). Dressings won't
completely stop the effects of aging, but will help quite a bit.
You really want to avoid any sort of softening oil like mink or neatsfoot,
or even heavy applications of dressings. Too much oil will saturate the
fibers, allowing them to slide past each other, which leads to premature
stretching and a very short useful life.
Lastly, the tension screw is really only to correct for a sagging
midsection -- It's hard to avoid a bit of sag, but you don't want it to
turn into a hammock either. Ideally the top will be hard enough that the
sit bone indentations will only sink a bit below the level of the rest of
the top. If the top is too soft, the sit bone indentations will continue
to collapse, while the central ridge running from the nose to the rear
won't. Taken too far, this leads to the dreaded "Ass Hatchet" effect. :-(
The best way to correct sit bone indentations that have gone too far is
to de-tension the nose, then soak the saddle underwater for an hour or so.
Once it's saturated, you can press the top back into shape, then let it
dry. You might need to stuff the inside with something to maintain it's
shape, but I haven't needed to the 5 or 6 times I've done it to various
saddles. Once the saddle is dry, you can give it a light dressing again.
I've found the wetting / drying process usually stiffens up the leather a
bit. Apparently the drying tends to force oils out from the fibers towards
the surface -- hence the re-dressing when dry. I've put thousands of
miles on saddles that I acquired with various asymmetries, or excessive
indentations that were essentially reshaped to a like new shape that held
up just as well as actual new saddles. The only failures I've had were
with saddles that were already deeply cracked across the rear cantle rivets
-- even then I got a year or two of use out of a saddle that looked to be
on death's doorstep.
Cameron Murphy
San Marcos, CA
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