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| TANNERY
TOUR |
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| At the turn of the century, there were
over 5000 tanneries in the USA. Now there are just over
100. While most of the basic steps and procedures remain
true to earlier days, equipment, material handling, and
specialty chemicals have greatly improved. |
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| Historically, tanneries were divided into
three basic areas: beamhouse, tanyard, and finishing. Beamhouse
removes the meat, membrane and hair; tanyard “tans” or preserves
the hide; and finishing adds dyes, oils, softeners, etc.
While each modern leather tannery has its own secret recipe
for the type of leather they produce, all have these three
basic components. |
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| Hides are received during deer season
each year. Custom hides are individually marked and recorded
with the owners name, address, etc. They are separated by
color requested and salt packed to start the curing process.
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Hide Storage |
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Once in the beamhouse, the hides are washed and run
thru a fleshing machine. This machine uses a high speed
roller knife to peel away all remaining meat and membrane.
Next, the hair is removed using an unhairing solution and
soaking process. This not only removes the hair, but the
hair cup or root, leaving the smooth grain leather. To reduce
the swelling in the hide from unhairing, it moves on to
bating and pickling.
Here the hide is prepped for the tanyard. |
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Turner Flesher |
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| In the tanyard , chromium salts are introduced to replace
the biodegradable protein in the hide. By this process,
the hide is preserved indefinitely. Almost all large commercial
leather tanneries use this type of tanning. Once the hide
completes this process, it is called “thru the blue”, and
can be stored or sent on to finishing. A series of mechanical
operations gets the hide ready for finishing. It is wrung
to remove excess water using a Stehling Feed Thru hydraulic
wringer; set out to soften, smooth, and loosen fibers in
the hide with a Baker-Layton Setting Machine; and finally,
split for thickness to an even, suitable glove and garment
thickness on a Turner 57” Band Splitter. |
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Stehling Wringer |
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| The hides proceed directly to finishing,
where they are dyed the desired shade and fatliquored with
finishing oils to keep the leather soft and supple. Then
off to the drying room for toggle drying, and a talc tumble
milling to luster and finish the hides. At this point, custom
hides are numbered to identify them with their owners, and
a Notify is sent out that the hide is ready. For those having
articles made, it is on to the Glove Shop and the cutting
department. |
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Toggle Drying |
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