Cool project. Please keep sharing your progress.
I’m a little curious what you are trying to accomplish by merging a KH Zero with the short handle saddle. How will this be different than just having a Zero on a pivotal seat post? Your mock up suggest that they will be fairly similar in length.
I guess the length is a general criticism of the short handle saddle, and you’re right that it’s not much different to the original KH zero but I only ever ride with a short handle so that is not an issue for me.
There are a couple of reasons I wanted to try this: I’m hoping the handle will give a more secure and more comfortable grip than the standard front bumper. I will trim enough foam that I’ll be able to get a full hand grip.
Second, I feel the current unicycle seat concepts are flawed and there must be a better way than hanging everything (bars, brake lever etc.) off a plastic saddle. I have a shadow handle on my other uni for this reason but this seat will go on my ‘keep it simple’ 24 muni and I wanted to try a way of having a handle bar without it being an extra bolted on part.
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I second that, and I wonder why there was never a professional answer of unicycle.com to the mad4one handle saddle.
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Nimbus shadow handle? I’d consider that a similar(-ish) concept. It’s really only long KH t-bars that really have issues I think. The short Ursli bars or Flansberrium bars seem to work fine.
The handle saddle is good, but I’m not sure if it is going to be the ultimate solution for handlebars either.
EDIT: I agree that just using the plastic base to mount everything is not a dream solution even for short handles, but I think for most unicyclists, going too far from the classic unicycle seat design will be a turnoff.
I agree on both counts. It would just be nice to have something which does not feel like an afterthought
I can understand this point of view, but I think this is why there has been very little innovation in the uni saddle, they have been mostly the same design with little tweaks and all suffer the same faults. It’s time for something totally new that actually works without needing a bunch of modifications.
It seems anyone who is a serious rider has a fully custom and modded setup.
The handle saddle is really the first innovation I’ve seen, but it doesn’t feel like a complete product to me, the base looks awesome, but the saddle looks like an afterthought to me. And of course it still suffers from the barely adjustable base.
With the amount of engineers out there riding I feel like we could do a lot better. But maybe it’s just the same old “the market is too small to foster innovation” argument.
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I think a lot of the tweaks you are seeing here in this thread come from passionate riders looking to create something very specific and unique to their needs.
I picked up a stock KH27.5 and was amazed by the simple get on and ride-ability of its stock Fusion One saddle. No bar. Just standard grip and if I weren’t deeply keen on tinkering with my gear and just wanted a nice unicycle to ride I think it would be fine left alone.
But I believe tinkering and modding is probably in the unicyclists psyche - and if they created a perfect product off the shelf I’d still want to customise it.
Can’t say I totally see this - as the Fusion Zero and One feel like a major departure from the standard more conventional curved shaped saddles.
It’s perhaps not that engaging a design when you factor in the need to add a bar if you want a bar, but not everyone does. I think it’s a pretty amazing product to come to market when it is such a small market - and from what I understand, saddle designing costs ££££/$$$$.
I know when this was first launched the saddle was made up with taped up foam and the like - but personally I think the saddle as it is made now with leather and cutaways is way more considered; it doesn’t feel like an afterthought to me. When I got my first medium I was blown away by the quality of the finish, the balance of construction and the fact that the leather was all replaceable should you need to.
It may look a bit funky - and on first ride, may feel like something is missing - but it has more thought in its design that might meet the eye (or bum) for that matter!
The bar design is clearly super rigid and to achieve this is gives up a bit on being adjustable- but when it comes to a saddle that is also your handle bar, you want rigidity more that customised angles.
In fact this saddle has corrected my body position for riding when holding with two hands as I have to lean forward more and shift my centre of gravity over the unicycle more (saddle moving backwards some).
From when I started riding in 2012 to now - the scene just looks soooo much better for options when it comes to saddles, and for a person just starting out, picking up an off the peg unicycle will be likely to satisfy (before the tinkering bug bites that is).
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After my first ride on the modified KH zero/handle saddle combo, I can report mixed results…
As a method for attaching the seat, the two bolt fixing works well and clamps the saddle securely against the handle. No further fixing is needed. I used some M6 threaded bar to make two studs and spaced it with flange nuts to keep everything tight.
However, the look is not as clean as I had hoped for. I have just taped the front of the seat cover for now in case I want to tweak the padding, so that could be neater but even so it is going to look like one seat perched on top of the other (I shouldn’t be surprised about that really…)
Finally the riding… it feels solid and the hand grip is comfortable but that short handle saddle really is short (even for me) and it’s effective length is made even shorter as I find myself sliding forwards in the seat. This was my issue with the original KH zero too, and I had hoped to introduce some curvature to it from the handle base but that didn’t really happen. Like I said, I might tweak the foam and I will try some spacers under the front to get a bit more angle.
So, some potential but not a perfect solution
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Im about to redo my saddle handle and as I took it apart I took a couple of pictures.
Medium saddle handle
1/2 pipe insulation foam
Hand stiched cloth cover
Hand stitched pig skin leather seat
Super comfortable and awesome seat but just a little to wide and heavy, reminds me of a beach cruiser seat and not a muni seat, so I recently got some new ISM bike seats to replace what I currently have and I’ll post the results here. The two seats are the ISM PL 1.1 and ISM PR 1.0.
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Unicycleken,
It is not clear, why did you made a seam on leather cover?
If the leather is original, it able to take any form, when it installed wet and dried after.