Antique bicycle seat rescue.

[Nabeaquam]

You can take a seat with the leather or cloth still pretty much intact and make it useful again without spending a bunch of money. I use G/flex 650 flexible marine epoxy and rub it into the leather or cloth. It’s still flexible and holds together for riding. Pure leather seats like most Brooks can have the epoxy rubbed in on the top and ottom after a few hours you can use a glove and fingers to smooth it out.


This one was real crumbly, good now.

This one was so bad you could break some of the leather off. I gave it a thick coat on both sides. I left a lot on the top without smoothing it out. It’s been sitting outside in the rain for months and is good. I’ll probably give it another coat or two to fill in the ripples I didn’t smooth out with my fingers after it started to dry. It’s a 24 hour cure and has to be mixed 50/50 or it will remain sticky. I use bottle caps to measure.

 

[highlandsflyer]

How's my butt going to look after twenty miles?

 

[Nabeaquam]

How's my butt going to look after twenty miles?

It’s tough, stuff, doesn’t come off, like it did before. I don’t know how much you could ride a saddle that’s treated this way but so far so good. I have many antique bicycles and they generally don’t warrant spending $350 for a new cover. This 100+ year old seat had the leather broken off at the back, on the right side. About 5% of the leather was gone. I used flexible Marne epoxy to attach new leather over the horsehair padding and when it was dry I rubbed in this epoxy on the whole seat. You can hardly tell it is a patch job, just looks well worn.

Before.
The leather was breaking apart. It was very dry and cracked on the right side of the nose. This saddle was bad but still salvageable. Sometimes they’re far gone it’s like trying to save dust or chips. They crumble when you touch them, let alone try to apply sticky epoxy. If you have an old bike with aged character, you can make the seat usable and has the aged look to match.
After. I rode it with out any crumbling or pant stains. It was comfortable as it flexes.