SECTION X. PICKING BAND BUTTS 



IT is the paradox of vegetable tannage that the less the 

 pelt is tanned the stronger is the leather produced. The 

 manufacture of butts for picking bands affords a good 

 illustration. What is required is a leather of maximum 

 toughness, pliability and durability. Any factor reducing 

 the tensile strength of the leather is fatal. Hence, compared 

 with most other tannages, picking band butts are under- 

 tanned. To ensure the desired softness and pliability, 

 moreover, it is necessary to have a mellow liming, rather 

 heavy bating, and a soft mellow tannage in sweet and weak 

 liquors. The required durability and the necessity for weak 

 liquors both point to oak bark as the most suitable tanning 

 material, assisted by some gambier in the early stages. 



A good quality hide is chosen, and given a long and 

 mellow liming of about 15-16 days. The one-pit system 

 may be used, and the hides are put into an old lime for about 

 five days with frequent handling and then placed in a new 

 lime which is made up in a pit containing about a foot 

 depth of the old liquor. After about twelve days another 

 cwt. of lime may be added. 



After unhairing and fleshing the goods are bated in 

 pigeon dung for four days at a temperature of about 78 F., 

 handling twice on the first and last days. The bating is 

 stopped and the deliming completed by paddling with 

 boracic acid (15 Ibs. per 100 butts). 



The tannage is commenced by paddling in a spent 

 handler liquor (4) to which a little gambier has been added. 

 The butts then go through the first handlers (5-i5), 

 which are rounds of ten pits in which the goods are handled 

 every day in the first week, and alternate days in the second 

 week, and are shifted forward twice a week in the next pit. 

 The goods are therefore in this set for five weeks, Gambier is 



