Leather & Brooks Saddle Care Tips

Whatever the material, Brooks products will age beautifully and provide the user with years of uninterrupted use. However, as such, they do require a small amount of common sense looking-after. Brooks selection of care products are designed to keep your Brooks saddle or bag looking great and functioning at its best.

There are two key tasks that are essential to properly and optimally maintain your leather saddle:

• Saddle Tension
• Leather condition

As leather is a natural material and each piece reacts differently, we cannot give exact indications, but we recommend that you inspect your saddle every 6 months, depending on your cycling frequency. However, please do not over treat your saddle as this may damage it.

Saddle Tension

With time and use, the leather on your saddle will undergo natural stretching, gradually reducing its tension. Without any intervention, the leather will begin to sag and lose its shape, leading to a loss of comfort as well as excess play in the important metal components, risking a shorter saddle lifespan or even frame breakage, or the lifting of rivets from the leather surface.

It is therefore crucial to undertake careful inspections of your saddle every 6 months to look for the signs that the leather has stretched.

Recognize Stretching

Make an adjustment

With a natural material like leather, there will always be variances in behavior, therefore it is not possible to say exactly how much to adjust the tension. However, it is not a good idea to overlook the tension adjustment procedure, and Brooks will refuse both warranty and extended guarantee claims in cases where this has been overlooked and the leather overtightened.

Leather condition

Like any leather product, your Brooks leather will dry out and lose suppleness with age. Therefore, you need to rehydrate and re-nourish it from time to time. This is done by applying our Brooks Proofide dressing, which is the only leather treatment you should use on your Brooks saddle.

We recommend to apply Proofide every 6 months.

How to apply Proofide

• Use a soft cloth
• Apply a thin layer of Proofide to cover the entire upper surface of the leather
• Leave on for a minimum of one hour and allow it to penetrate through the surface
• With a clean, dry and soft cloth, vigorously and thoroughly buff the leather surface until all the remaining Proofide will be removed and a healthy sheen will be returned.

Proofide also acts to soften the leather and, if applied too frequently, there might be risk of over-softening the leather to the point that it will no longer to support the weight of the rider. Because of this, apply Proofide only every 6 months.

Courtesy: Brooks England - Our channel partners and makers of legendary leather saddles.