OX LEATHER CLOTH. 523 



according to the kind of imitation leather wished to he turned out. 

 Thns "moll" a very thick soft kind of cotton fabric made at Manchester 

 is preferred for calf-skin ; fine calico or linen for waterproof material for 

 macintoshes, siphonias, &c, as perfectly waterproof as india rubber 

 itself ; the alpaca, silk, cloth or common cotton for boots and shoes, 

 bookbinding, harness, carriage furniture, and all the thousand purposes 

 to which real leather is applied. What the composition of the pigment 

 is which in a few hours changes common cotton into a substance like 

 enamelled leather, and only to be distinguished from the real article 

 by its non-liability to crack and its greatly additional strength, is of 

 course a strict trade secret. The mode of manufacture, however, is 

 simple. The fabric to be converted into leather, silk, alpaca, or what 

 ever it may be, of any length or width, is merely wound on rollers 

 beneath a broad knife-blade, which by its weight presses in and equally 

 distributes the pigment previously placed upon it. A hundred 

 yards may thus be done in a single minute, and in the most simple 

 application the whole manufacture begins and ends, except that three 

 coats of the pigment are necessary to perfect the leather, and an 

 interval of twenty-four hours must elapse between the application of 

 each. During this period the sheets are carried to a drying-house heated 

 to a temperature of 94 degrees, and where they are hung like oil-cloth, 

 according to the order in which they arrive, the last coiners displacing 

 those which have completed their time and are ready for their second 

 coat. Thus the manufacture never stops, and three days suffice to com- 

 plete " hides " of any length or breadth to which fabrics can be woven. 

 For imitations of morocco or other grained leathers the long sheets are 

 simply passed, when finished, through iron rollers, which indent them 

 in any pattern required. For enamelled leather the enamel is applied 

 after the third coat, by hand labour, which though slower of course, than 

 that of machinery, is nevertheless rapid enough to cover the sheet in a 

 very short time. The enamel, when dry is infinitely superior to any 

 description of patent leather. It is perhaps, scarcely necessary to state 

 that the pigment which transforms the cotton into leather is capable of 

 being tinted to any shade that may be wanted of red, green, brown* 

 black, blue, yellow, &c, and that whatever are the ingredients of the 

 composition no admixture of india rubber or gutta percha forms part o* 

 it, inasmuch as the leather cloth when complete, even when left folded 

 and exposed to a considerable heat is entirely free from the tendency to 

 stickiness, which has been the great objection to all waterproof materials, 

 — ' The Ironmonger.' 



