Brooks B17 with extra-wide long cutout modification

In 2016 a reader of my site wanted a B17 with longer oval cutout. I made that, but in the end this was not sufficient for him, so I suggested testing a wider longer cutout that I wanted to try anyway for myself. So after a week or so that I tried it, I then sent him my saddle for testing. For me there was too much pressure on the sit bone on one side, this is a problem in this modifications the weight needs to be distributed by a slightly larger area of the sit bone, not just the tip of it. From how I laced it to be very stiff with the wrapped section, I think it might stay that way, but I sent it to the guy in the USA who wanted a different type of cutout, for further testing as I was going on some long trips and wouldn't do any testing for months.

After some short trying out it seems we had similar issues: There was indeed no pressure at all on the soft tissues, and the saddle was not too weak nor soft, instead with the way I laced (on purpose to keep strength despite lost material), it was actually too hard, no distribution of weight around more than the tip of the sit bones... From this I think the idea of a long cutout and folding the edges of the leather does work, but the cutout needs to be less wide... I've not heard anything any more since end of 2016 about his experiences with this saddle, not cool!

I didn't try to make it beautiful, just functional as I didn't have much time and I tried various in-between stages of cutouts. When making this cutout less wide, perhaps this could become a future 'near perfect' cutout. The last picture shows the template for cutout + the section at the sides that I wrapped around towards the bottom to keep as much strength as possible of the leather top despite the cutout, so what is cutout is on the template only the middle section.

Last modified: 2019-4-22