CHAPTER TWO
HIDES AND THEIR TREATMENT
If we examine our shoes, we will find that the different parts are composed of material called leather. The bottom of the shoe is of hard leather, while the part above the sole is of a softer, more pliable leather. This leather is nothing more than the hides of different animals treated in such a way as to remove the fat and the hair.
After the hides have been taken from the dead body of the animal, they are quite heavily salted to preserve them from spoiling. In this salted condition they are shipped to the tanneries.
The process or series of processes by which the hides and skins of animals are converted into leather is called tanning. The process may be divided into three groups of subprocesses as follows:—
Beamhouse process, which removes the hair from the hides and prepares them for the actual process of the tanning or conversion into leather; tanning, which converts the raw hide into leather; and finishing, which involves a number of operations, the objects of which are to give the leather the color that may be desired and also to make it of uniform thickness, and impart to it the softness and the finish that is required for a particular purpose.
Hides are divided roughly in the tannery, according to the size, into three general classes:—
(1) Hides, skins from fully grown animals, as cows, oxen, horses, buffaloes, walrus, etc. These are thick, heavy leather, used for shoe soles, large machinery belting, trunks, etc., where stiffness, strength, and wearing qualities are desired. The untanned hides weigh from twenty-five to sixty pounds.