If you like plastic and flimsy staples instead of steel and rivets I guess they re okay.

They take a lot of time, look crappy, cheap and unsubstantial and just seem out of place on an Iron Horse. In my opinion fiberglass pans are a pain in the ass to make. When something works well it tends not to change over time and the old standard metal saddle pan is one of those things that works really well. In those days we built these huge camel-humped monsters that were upholstered like car seats with welted seams and diamond pleats but the pans were made the same then as they are today. The first real paying job I had in a chopper shop was making saddles for custom bikes. In reality however almost everybody refers to the saddle as a seat so you can call it pretty much anything you like, especially if you make it yourself. If the pony in question is a real motorcycle it needs to be saddled so in this article we re going to be building a Saddle for our steed. It seems pretty obvious to me that you don t put a seat on a steel pony unless that pony is on some kind of carousel or merry-go-round. I have noticed that many of these seat makers also make saddlebags but don t make seat bags which seems confusing. Unfortunately there are dozens of companies and individuals out there who still try to build seats for motorcycles since they don t know the difference between the two objects and such makers generally don t do much real riding.

There is huge difference between a seat and a saddle and after a couple thousand miles your back-end will begin to tell you about such differences. Two wheeled motor-driven vehicles have saddles. In true Chopper parlance motorcycles don t actually have a seat as such, since those devices are usually only found on bicycles. It s pretty hard to ride a bike without something to sit on so eventually you ll be faced with deciding on whether or not to make a custom saddle or resort to a store-bought thing to sit your ass on. 1 Seats and Saddles This is an article I ve wanted to do for several years now and in the true tradition of the Chopper Builders Handbook we re going to show the nitty-gritty details on how to get the job done effectively and not just a few pictures of some guy putting together bits of foam and leather.

The new chopper builders handbook