Subscribe Feed (RSS)Refinishing A Scuffed Brooks Saddle
July 27th, 2009 by Bill | 4 Comments | Filed in Brooks, Uncategorized(The following is an e-mail correspondence from a customer, detailing his efforts to refinish his Brooks saddle after it had gotten scuffed.)
By Michael Daigh
I took a spill and got a nasty bit of concrete chew damage to the corner.
The first thing I did was sand the rough/chewed area smooth with 120 grit sandpaper. Then I moved on to my first repair attempt.
My first attempt at repair was going to involve a well known edge burnishing technique, utilizing leather dye and gum tragacanth. This method is why many well made leather objects have smooth cut edges: after cutting the leather is rubbed with the gum, and then burnished with a smooth object, likely mildly wet. Not having gum tragacanth available, I went with a suitable alternative: Beeswax.
The result was horrible. The beeswax/dye combo darkened to an awful black/red old brick shade, and didn’t smooth very pretty either. The sandpaper I used wasn’t fine enough.
So, I cringed and sanded off that finish, regrettably taking a little more leather with it, and went back to thinking on my problem. What I came to as a solution may be surprising.
For some background, the top grain of the leather that Brooks uses is purchased by them in that nice smooth state. The tanner does that with either metal or glass presses utilizing both pressure and friction on the leather. The leather itself is a very “standard” vegetable dye leather with a glaze finish. Which meant, in theory, I needed to duplicate the glazing process, and would not need the dye at all; a vegetable tanned hide is tanned all the way through, and the glazing process brings that color to the smooth finished surface.
But how to duplicate that on such a small scale?
Well, obviously I had already started with sandpaper. Then I moved to finer sandpaper; a 200+ grit finishing/sanding sponge. Then on to the only tool I could fine that would step me down to an adequately glazed finish: A Revlon Shape ‘n’ Buff emery tool.
Oh yes, that is indeed what I used.
First you need to “case” the leather a bit; damp the surface of the area with a damp washcloth. Then using firm (but not really hard) pressure, start to rub/buff the effected area starting with “step 1: even out” on the tool. What you’ll eventually hear is a “clicking” sound when you change directions going back and forth. That sound is good, and a sign that it’s about time to move on.
Case the area again. Move to “step 2: smooth”. By the way, the emery board is labeled with these, so it’s easy to figure out. Rub until you hear the clicking, and you don’t perceive anymore progress.
Case again. Then “step 3: buff”. Reapeat as above.
Case again. Then “step 4: shine”. By this point you’re “glazing” the surface that you’ve gradually stepped down from lots of surface fibers to almost none. The finish blends perfectly to touch: cosmetically if you look close, you can see that the area isn’t perfect – it won’t be, since the actual top grain was left on a street somewhere (at least in my case).
But, this was the best way I could find to duplicate in a spot repair manner a tanner’s glazing process for the finish. Again, the process “lifts” the color back out from the vegetable tanned leather.
Attached to this e-mail is the damage, and the sanded saddle. Unfortunately, the picture of the damage is very unclear, and I didn’t realize it until I downloaded the pic, well after the repair was complete. Hopefully you can get some impression of the fact that it was chewed up Brooks road pizza on that corner.
Brooks has introduced a series of “Bike Polo Limited Editions.” We expect to have them here in a few weeks. The models are:
