The Leather Making Process How Are Skins Made?
Like all things they start a life very differently to what they end up being made into.
With leather it starts off as a living animal and then the skin is a by-product of the food, beauty, and medicine chain. The skins have to be used to avoid the waste materials becoming rotten and causing a health hazard.
Once the skin is removed from the animal it has to follow a strict process to avoid microorganisms in the air attacking the skin. So, the skin has to follow a very strict process to cure it, or it’s frozen at once and then sent to a tannery to be cured.
Before it becomes a skin it’s known as a pelt, the pelt is with the hair or fur on the hide, this has to be salted, cooled, shaved, have the flesh removed and unwanted tissue, then de-liming, bating and pickling, before it can be tanned.
Leather Skin once tanned and pigmented
Step 1 Leather Production Process
Step 2 and 3 Skin Production Process
Step 4 and 5 Leather Production Process
Step 6 The Hide Production Process
Take a look at some of the Tanneries in the UK there are plenty more this is just two of them.
Also take a look at Britain’s first Micro Tannery