LEATHER 



After removing the horns, the softened or recent hides are laid in a heap for a short 

 time, after which they are suspended on poles in a close room called a smoke-house 

 heated somewhat above the common temperature by a smouldering fire. In these 

 circumstances, a slight putrefaction supervenes, which loosens the epidermis, and 

 renders the hair easily detachable. This method for removing the hair is by no means 

 general in this country. The plan adopted is to place the hides in a large vat or 

 pit, containing milk of lime, in which they must be moved frequently, to allow the 

 lime to act equally on every part. When the menstruum has taken proper effect, the 

 hair is easily removed, and for this purpose the hide is spread out, and a blunt tool 

 is worked over the surface. The hair being removed, the hide is washed in water to 

 cleanse it from the lime, which must be most thoroughly effected. 



The heaviest hides are for the most part tanned for sole leather, and as the thinner 

 parts are cut off previous to their being prepared for sale, they have received the 

 name of butts or backs : the various processes through which these pass will be first 

 described. 



After removing the hair and washing, the hides are placed on a convex beam (Jig. 

 1359), and worked with a concave tool with two handles (fig. 1360), in order to remove 

 any flesh or fatty matter which 



may adhere to them ; this 1359 



being done, they are worked 

 on the same beam, on the 

 grain side, to drive out the 

 grease and remove any re- 

 maining hair. The fleshings 

 are pressed into cakes, and 

 sold for making glue, as are 

 all such portions of the hide 

 or skin as cannot be conve- 

 niently worked. The hair is 

 sold to plasterers, to be used 

 in their mortar ; and the tails, 

 also for the hair, to sofa- 

 makers and others requiring 

 such materials. 



Such hides as are designed 

 for machinery purposes are 

 next immersed in a pit con- 

 taining water impregnated 

 with sulphuric acid, the acid varying from 



to i^oth of the mixture. This process 



is called raising, because it distends the pores, and makes the fibres swell, so as to 

 become more susceptible of the action of tanning infusions. Forty-eight hours in 

 general suffice for this operation, but more time may be safely taken. From the 

 term raising it will be concluded that the substance of the hide is increased, and 

 this is the fact ; but as the gelatine is not increased, it is said that the shoemaker's 

 hammer would condense the leather so much that it would lose any supposed ad- 

 vantage arising out of this increase in thickness. There is, however, a method 

 of augmenting the substance of sole leather called puffing, which, when once commu- 

 nicated, appears to exist permanently ; the process is known to a small extent only, 

 and the material is said to be considerably injured by this mode of preparation. 



When the hides are sufficiently raised, they are transferred to a pit supplied with a 

 weak infusion of bark ; here they are handled, at first several times a day ; that is, they 

 are drawn out of the pits, or moved up and down in the liquor, to prevent the grain 

 from being drawn into wrinkles. As the ooze, or tanning infusion, takes effect, they 

 are put into pits containing stronger liquors, and after a month or six weeks they are 

 placed in a pit, in which they are stratified with oak-bark, ground by a proper mill 

 into a coarse powder. The pit is then filled with an infusion of bark. In a month 

 or five weeks the tanning and extractive matter of the bark will have intimately 

 combined with the animal fibre ; the pit, exhausted of its virtue, must be renewed by 

 taking out the spent bark, and repeating the dose as in the first instance. The hides, 

 which were placed at the top of the pit at first, are now put into the bottom, to equa- 

 lise the action. In about three months this also is spent, and the process being 

 repeated two or tliree times more, the operation is complete. The hides are now re- 

 moved from the pit, and hung up in a shed. In the progress of drying they are com- 

 pressed with a steel tool, and afterwards they are subjected to the action of a brass 

 roller. The steel tool is called a pin ; it is of a triangular shape (fig. 1361), with the sides 

 scooped out (fig. 1362), presenting three blunt edges. The butt is thrown across a pole, 

 and the workman, taking the pin by the handles a, a (fig, 1361), presses it forcibly over 



02 



