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Know Your Leather

Leather Crazy You

So you are nuts about leather. Your leather envelope, leather padfolios, leather passport holders, wallets, belts, shoes, and bags say so. This passion has led you to be finicky over leather products and it’s no joke to provide people like you leather items for gifts. What if you’re at the giving end?

There are endless supplies of leather itmes online and offline, wholesale and retail, and almost every imaginable item for men, women, teens, and children. If you are lucky, you can get discounted prices and rock bottom deals some lucky days of the year. The hitch lies in the selection of items and the kind of leather your beneficiary would like to have - and there is the price angle to mull over, too.

But how much do you know about leather? Leather is the processed tough skin of animals, and is differentiated by how it is manufactured. Leather is manufactured by vegetable or chrome tanning, rawhide treatment, and boiling. The different procedures produce different types of leather appropriate for different usesand products.

Know Your Leather

Boiled Leather — Your leather covered book or hardback is an example of boiled leather. Boiled leather is not used for wearable items or upholstery because it is hard and inappropriate for the purpose.

Vegetable Tanning — Vegetable-based ingredients are used to tan the animal hides. This process results in leather that is strong yet elastic. The big downside is the leather’s vulnerability to water. Exposed to water for long, the leather changes color, shrinks, and becomes hard. Leather tanned this way assumes different shades of brown..

Chrome Tanning — This uses chromium or chrome salts to darken or tan the leather. The process allows the tanning of the leather in different hues, too, and helps preserve its suppleness and shape, in spite of exposure with water.

Rawhide — This is a process that requires the stripping down of the animal hides. Once thinned and roughened, these are soaked in a lime solution and then stretched. This type of leather makes for strong shoes and laces. Incidentally, your much-loved band’s drum head is made of this variety of leather.

Animal hides for leather are not restricted to cow hides. Even snake and crocodile skins make unique leather. Don’t get fooled, loook into leather items according to [kind|type[/spin], class, grade, thickness, material content, toughness, serviceability, and price. Prove to them you know how to leather it up.

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