Keeping a leather saddle in good condition Is shoe polish a good or at least adequate solution for keeping a leather saddle in good condition? And/or better options?
I guess shoe polish (the creamy one, not fancier new ones with sylicone and lots of synthetic polymers) at least won't do any harm, but maybe there are better choices.

Manufacturers advise the use of specific products (Brooks Proofide, for example) both for treating the surface against wear and tear induced by friction and the elements, but also for treating the deep layers of the saddle thickness, improving its mechanical characteristics, specially when new and yet uncomfortable, but also after some use and possibly abuse (mainly due to weather).

Leather tanning actually takes the subcutanous connective layer of cattle skin, which is rich in collagen, and treats it so that it can last longer. As such (at least it seems so to me) they have a "natural" affinity for natural substances, specially the lipo-soluble molecules found, for example, in Proofide itself: tallow, beeswax, cod oil, etc.

I like to look at my Brooks as if it was a somewhat living friend: we have a friendship, I treat it nicely and it responds by treating me nice. Even caressing it and silently talking to it is fine (at least is makes ME feel fine).

So with the Proofide I like to think I am giving something it likes: those fatty, variated, long-chain, apolar, gracefully degrading organic molecules, and not the inorganic, synthetic, industrialized, unlively plastified synthetic products one might choose as an alternative.

(and by the way, the thinnest layer once in a while is more than enough: that tiny can of Proofide will last for many years!)