Tanning Leather for Moccasins - Part 2

From pre-tanning to finishing, conventional leather tanning requires about 15 steps, which produces enormous amounts of waste water and pollutants. The first steps of leather tanning is referred to as the beamhouse operation which includes trimming, soaking, fleshing, and taking the hair off the hide. The next step is the tanyard process which includes bating, pickling, tanning, wringing and splitting. The final steps includes staking, dry milling, buffing, spraying finishing, and plating. Environmental rules are strictly enforced due to chemicals used and other pollutants.

Today, most animal hides are shipped from slaughter houses to tanneries, and so they must almost always be cured after slaughtering to stop the hide from putrefying. Usually the hides are coated with salt and other chemicals. When the hides reach the tanners, they are stiff, hard and rough. At the tannery, soaking the hide in water for up to two days starts the process of cleaning the hide, to remove all impurities such as flesh and fat, and, if necessary, the last remnants of curing agents, such as salt. It also makes handling the hide easier. After soaking, to avoid errors, modern tanneries use machines with blunt blades to scrape away the hair and flesh/fat/inside skin. This is called "fleshing".

While the hides are still wet, tanning factories shave the hides by pushing them against an ever-revolving band knife. The hide can be split by this process into two useful sheets which gives the correct thickness for tanning. This is called "skiving". Softening compounds are chemical rather than natural ( urine), and the last bath of sulfuric acid and common salt, is designed to remove the any traces of chemicals which is helpful in the tanning process to follow.

Quote for the Day:

"No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes."