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The process of dressing up animal skin/hide into leather consists of three stages. The first stage is the preparation for tanning. The second stage is the actual tanning and other chemical treatment. The third stage applies finishing to the surface.
In preparation for tanning, the skins (of smaller animals like goat, sheep, lamb, pig, etc) or hides (of larger animals like cow, buffalo, etc) are washed, alkali treated to remove hair and natural fat, and acidified to prepare for tanning.
The majority of leather produced today is tanned using chrome tanning material. Tanning is followed by dyeing (to give color), fatliquoring (to add fat/oil) and retanning (to fill up the fiber structure) in wet condition.
The leathers are dried and mechanically softened and prepared for finishing. Finishing is usually coating of surface with paint like mixes. Suedes, Nubucks, etc. are finished by raising the nap of the leather by rubbing with emery paper ( sandpaper).
In ancient history, tanning was considered a noxious trade and relegated to the outskirts of town, amongst the poor. The ancients used leather for waterskin s, bags, harnesses, boats, armor, quiverA quiver is a container for arrows, crossbow bolts or darts, such as those fired from a bow, crossbow or blowgun. A quiver may have different forms depending on where it is to be used: quivers could hang from an archer's belt, from the saddle of a horse os, scabbardA scabbard is a sheath for holding a sword. Scabbards have been made of many materials over the millennia, including leather and wood. Most commonly, scabbards were either worn on a belt at the hip, or on an over the shoulder strap that held it diagonallys, bootThis article is about a type of footwear. For other uses of the word "boot" see boot (disambiguation). A boot is a type of footwear which covers at least the foot and usually the ankle, and sometimes extends up to the knee or even the hip. They come in evs, and sandalSandal, England is a village in the county of West Yorkshire, England, south of Wakefield, by the River Calder. Sandal Castle is a castle of Norman origin which was the venue for the Battle of Wakefield in the Wars of the Roses. Sandals are an open type os. Around 2500 BC, the SumerSumer (or Shumer Sumeria Shinar, native ki-en-gir formed the southern part of Mesopotamia from the time of settlement by the Sumerians until the time of Babylonia. Sumerian cuneiform script may pre-date any other form of writing, and dates to no later thaians began using leather, affixed by copperCopper is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. Notable characteristics Copper is a reddish-coloured metal, with a high electrical and thermal conductivity (among pure metals at room temperature, only silver studStud could refer to any of these : stud, a horse employed for horse breeding stud, a male gender role ear stud, a form of earring for pierced ears. wall stud, a vertical member within a wall frame, usually a two-by-four which reaches from floor to ceilings, on chariot wheels.
Tanners would take an animal skin and soak it in water. Then they would pound and scour the skin to remove flesh and fat. Next, either they soaked the skin in urine to loosen hair fibers or they let the skin putrefy for several months, after which they dipped the skin in a salt solution. After the hair fibers were loosened, the tanners would scrape them off with a knife.
Once the hair was removed, tanners would bate the material by pounding dung into the skin or soaking the skin in a solution of animal brains. They would also take cedar oil, alum, or tannin and stretch the skin as it lost moisture and absorbed the tanning agent.
Leftover leather would be turned into glue. Tanners would place scraps of hides in a vat of water and let them deteriorate for months. The mixture would then be placed over a fire to boil off the water.