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The dry work is going to give the different kinds of leather. I won't detail it much for there are a lot of different techniques, processes, and machines. But let's take a few examples... You remember 'Top Gun', and the worn-out leather jacket Tom Cruise was wearing? Well, this kind of leather is a pigmented leather: a brown-dyed tanned skin which was pigmented (like 'painted') with a darker color on the flower. Then it was put in a tank with stones, and artificially worn out (exactly like stone-washed jeans!). The leather can also be rubbed down on the flower side, and give "Nubuc" (velvet aspect but thick skin), or 'sewn' (in the thickness) and give 'velvet' (velvet aspect, but thin skin), etc... And there we are... You know (almost) everything about the work on sheep skins now. I hope I wasn't too boring or shocking, and that this information made you want to know a bit more about it... Think about it next time you wear a leather jacket…! Let's take the cuirot as a starting point.
On this dry skin, there are still remains of wool (at the extremities of the members, around the neck,...), and impurities too. The cuirots are therefore put into baths with a concentrated basic solution (sulphur) to clean the external surface of the skin (which is called "flower"). Then, to eliminate the remnants of flesh stuck on the internal surface, the skin is put into a special machine (echarneuse) which takes any flesh or fat out. Then comes the tanning itself, which consists in treating the skin to prevent it from decaying. This treatment can be achieved by vegetal tannin or mineral tannins. Vegetal Tannin gives a skin that is not very supple, and which is called basane. When looking inside leather shoes, one can often see what a basane is because the lining is often made of it. But the basane is also used to make leather for other things. Mineral tannin contains chrome salts, it is often used on fresh skins called picklés (skins which come directly from the abattoirs, which have already undergone a pre-tanning, and which are impregnated of Sulphuric acid to preserve them). It gives a very supple leather which is used to make leather clothes. Once the skin is tanned, it can be dyed. It is then the end of the wet work. Tanning - Mégisserie
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