Blazing Saddles

Yeehaw partners welcome to this weeks rootin' tootin' post all about saddles, in particular blazing ones.

This week was a hiatus from class but the holy grail of ordinary bike building was thrust upon me to make a sockdolager of a saddle template!

I had been thinkin' of buying me a saddle but I was hornswoggled. I figured rightly I'd be much better at building a saddle than you know the people of the land, the common clay of the new west, such as Selle Italia, Fizik, Brooks or Ritchey. You know

Then I says to me self might'n I get me a nice brooks leather seat, but the opportunity to make somethin' more'n difficult than it needn' be seems to good to pass up. I was also of the mind the unique seating position of an ordinary bike means you need extra wide seat to distribute the load. Strange but note worthy this is a glaring oversight amongst most saddle manufacturers. Equally strange is that Authentic Frontier Gibberish isn't more popular consarn it!

Although there is an international day of celebration on 24 January each year with the Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector day.

Essentially I need to whittle out the wood into the shape of a seat. This is made more difficult as I did it while playing a banjo and chewing tobacco.

I've mentioned in an earlier post that the seat on an ordinary bike is uncomfortable after a while you end up with a raw hide as you can't change position so the rule of bum (thanks for that pun I owe you one Brett) is to go wider so it won't be a slim design found on my usual bikes.

 Note the comparison to a fairly wide modern seat.

 

This piece from Brett will be turned into a mold for the leather seat. This is what the seat would look like as per the mold above as per Brett's testing of the theory on how to make a saddle.

Faster'n a jackrabbit on a hot rock I unleashed my new Excalibur I've dubbed MFTPF (My Friend the Power File) and drew some random lines on the template in the hopes this will help.

MFTPF (half of which is thanks to Pete) is something I've seen my Poppa use on many occasions and it's one of his most used tools however I've rarely seen one in the shops. I finally found me one and turns out it's more fun than tickling a badger. 

This was part way through. I'm not trying to remove too much but get an improved shape.

I spent some time using sand paper made much easier when I finally realised cutting down a piece of belt sander makes a strong and fantastic curved piece sander. There is still some work to do on it particularly in the groove at the rear of the saddle. I'm going to seek feedback on it prior to cutting away too much. Whilst unlike metal wood does grow with watering but only if it's alive (there is always fine print). 

 

Hopefully with more work I'll have a saddle that will give me minutes of comfortable riding. I'm sorry y'all but mounting the saddle to the bike is a whole nother story and I have to absquatulate off. Y'all come back now ya hear!

 Raw hide!