THE PREPARATION OF PELT 23 



kept separate and fetches a higher price. Fleshing is the 

 next process. The hides are again placed over a beam, 

 with the flesh side (i.e. the side nearest the flesh) upper- 

 most. Skilled workmen then cut off, with a sharp convex 

 knife, the fat, flesh and connective tissue left in flaying. 

 Rounding is usually the next process. The unhaired and 

 fleshed hide is spread out flat and cut up into butt, shoulder 

 and a pair of bellies. These parts have different commercial 

 values, and may afterwards be tanned by different methods 

 for very different purposes for dressing leather, and some- 

 times even for sole leather. Scudding is the last piece of 

 beam work. The fleshed hides (whether rounded or not) are 

 washed, or at least rinsed, with water, and again placed on 

 the beam grain side up. They are then scraped with a 

 rather sharp concave knife, to remove " scud," which consists 

 of hair roots and sheaths, lime soaps, fat, pigment and other 

 dirt. Short hair is shaved off by a very sharp hand knife. 



The beam work demands a certain amount of skill from 

 the workmen, especially from the flesher, whose sharp 

 knife may prove very wasteful in incompetent hands. 

 Hand labour was slowly but surely being replaced by 

 machinery before the war, and war-time conditions have 

 greatly accelerated the rate of transition. Beam house 

 machinery is rapidly becoming universal. The machines 

 are cumbrous and expensive in cost and in power, but 

 machine work is quicker, less laborious, and needs much 

 fewer workmen. Many types of machine have been sug- 

 gested, but the most useful are those in which the hides 

 pass over rollers and are simultaneously acted upon by a 

 rapidly revolving cylindrical knife with spiral blades, one 

 half being a left-handed and the other a right-handed spiral, 

 so that the hide is scraped outwards as well as in the direction 

 of motion. The part of the hide being acted upon rests on 

 a pneumatic roller. By changing the type of spiral knife 

 cylinder the machine Avill unhair, flesh or scud. 



Deliming is a general name covering a number of 

 similar operations whose primary object is the neutralization 

 and removal of the caustic lime and soda in the plumped 



