I watched the “Dirty Jobs” episode of the leather tannery-man, that is one nasty job. Historically, leather tanning was always masty-it smelled so bad that msot towns forbade tanneries within their limits. It looks like leather tanning hasn’t had any innovations in a long time-surely there must be better ways to do it now?
If people who likie leather only knew how nasty doing this is…maybe they would consider vinyl. From the TV show, it looked like they were using century-old machinery-is this an industry that ignores innovation?
All I can say is, I’m glad I never had to do this for a living.
Vinyl is no substitute for leather.
Try sliding down the road after coming off a motorcycle while wearing vinyl.
I suppose we should be thankful the tanning process isn’t quite as primative as it once was…
*Leather: Preparation and Tanning by Traditional Methods
by Lotta Rahme.
Translated from Swedish by David Greenebaum.
© 1995, 1998 by The Caber Press.
ISBN: 1-887719-00-8
SS
If you think Mike had it bad, try to catch History’s Worst Jobs, which is Tony Robinson taking the same concept as Dirty Jobs and applying it to historical professions, including doing still-extant jobs the traditional way.
Century old machines are positively futuristic compared to soaking the hides in pits full of piss and dog crap, then scraping them by hand.
The soaking and scraping is mechanized, they no longer use piss and crap - how much more innovation is there room for on a non-industrial level? Remember, Mike visited a small-scale tannery, not a huge operation that tans hundreds of hides a day.
I saw the episode that Ralph is referring to and I can’t believe that was a state-of-the-art processing facility. But having recently become a hunter, I can attest to the fact that hide in general, and deer hide in particular, is not easy to deal with. I believe the tanning process involves using extremely potent chemicals to “treat” the hide, which contains oil, fat and fur all mixed together. It is undoubtedly a nasty process, but I assume in a larger facility there would be more automation involved… but I don’t know if that’s really the case or not.
Why hasn’t someone come up with a easier way to do it by now? If there was money in it someone would have invented a new process that might use different chemicals, but tanning is tanning and either the current process is “good enough” or there is no better way to do it. Keep in mind that humans have been tanning hides for hundreds and hundreds of years, so the method described on the show wasn’t dreamed up last week.
As an aside, I was wondering how Native Americans did it since presumably they didn’t have access to the noxious chemicals that are typically used by Europeans, although I could be wrong about that…
You can tan leather with noxious chemicals which today is the easy cheap way (as long as you ignore the effect on the enviroment and the workers health), which is how it’s done in India. (Also colouring the leather with chemical dyes, nasty stuff).
Or you can tan the leather with herbs. That’s how all leather sold in Germany (Europe?) is treated, at least that’s what one guy selling leather for hobbycraft told me. (Finished leather goods like shoes are another matter, obviously - most of that leather will be cheap Indian leather).
The leather was usually treated with ash from the wood fire, which made a lye (?) solution and caused the hair to fall out. It was rubbed with the brain (I don’t know if because this was best or just conveniently at hand), and soaked in pits with herbal solution.
Remember that for hundreds of years, Europeans also had no “noxious” chemicals besides the ammonia that comes naturally from letting urine rot.
I haven’t seen the episode in question, but I’ve tanned hides of animals I’ve hunted myself: several foxes, raccoons, rabbit, squirrels and a couple deer. Scraping the hide is labor-intensive, but I never used any chemicals, urine or feces. I’ve read about using wood ashes to take the hair off a fresh pelt, but I’ve never done that myself. All the small pelts I ever tanned I left the hair on, and the larger deer hides I scraped the hair off with a scraper I made myself by grinding an edge on a file and mounting the blade in a handle. All I used for tanning was the brain from the animal itself. Before the mad cow scare I could buy brain at butcher shops, but it’s easier to use the brain from the animal itself.
If you don’t process the hide within a short time and the weather is warm it will begin to smell. If you do start processing the hide before it begins to decay, it doesn’t really smell.
Tanning hide with brain will also soften your hands, so if you need your callouses for any work you do with your hands, you’ll want to wear latex gloves.
The hard part is to keep stretching the hide as it dries, so you don’t end up with a stiff, crinkly hide. Done correctly, brain-tanned buckskin is as soft as flannel.
I’m now willing to donate the part of my brain that remembers that image to the process of tanning a deer skin.
My, this would be a fetching name for a punk band.
Here’s the How It’s Made segment on Tanning leather; leather production in industrial quantities (although those guys pasting the leather hides on the glass to dry looks really labor intensive). One cool thing about How It’s Made was they also had a segment where they showed those tanned leather hides (or similar ones) being made into leather coats.
I’m going to break up the url with annoying spaces, not because it’s NSFW but just in case there’s a problem w/ hotlinking to it on YouTube (kind of easy to google for, though)
http:// www. youtube .com/ watch? v = 9vbTCeYwt_g
There are three main ways of “tanning” leather - with emulsified oils or aldehydes (brain “tanning”, oil “tanning” (chamois)), with mineral salts (chrome “tanning”, alum tawing ) and then proper tanning (plant tannins - oak bark tanning, mulch pit tanning).
It’s the middle method in modern form that uses some seriously noxious chemicals (chrome salts are very, very bad for one), but that method is only 150 years old. It’s overwhelmingly used today because it is orders of magnitude faster than vegetable tanning.
Other than the actual tanning, it’s the dehairing and defleshing operations that use the noxious substances, but this is a matter of convenience, not necessity. Physical methods *could *replace both, but they can’t be easily automated (skin is not a uniform material) hence are labour-intensive and therefore expensive.
Also, it should be noted that there’s no such thing as just “leather”. Different tanning methods produce different degrees of softness, dye penetration, waterproofing etc. Essentially, different end-products. Brain tan may be an overall less “nasty, stinky” method, but you can’t mould buckskin like you could veg-tan, and it doesn’t take dye very well. Alum tawing produces a lovely, pure-white leather, but I wouldn’t get it wet…
Sort of the “sausage analogy” at work: if you like it, don’t see it being made.
MrDibble, what am I not getting about the difference between proper tanning and “tanning”? You write as if it’s obvious.
Beware of Doug, I would speculate that when he says “proper tanning”, he means a process that uses some form of tannic acid, aka tannin.
Yep.
Kewl. Ignorance fought.
what’s wrong with you? no warning?
I am now heading to the bathroom to shove a bleach-covered toothbrush up my nose to try and scrub my brain.
NSFW. NSFAnyone
There are also some financial limits being pushed – having a less smelly process is not a top priority. However being able to split a hide reliably into thinner sections is. Given the choice between reducing smell and increasing yield by 5%, as a manufacturer, which would you take?