Leather Hides

I have been doing more reading in my old leather manufacturing books.  Keep in mind that I model 1939 so what I say here likely differs (maybe a lot) from modern practices.  Most leather is made from hides or skins of animals slaughtered for food.  Most of those hides were apparently converted to leather regardless of the demand for leather - it seems that would diminish the price of leather but I guess they did not throw the hides away (may have sent some to the glue factories).  In any event, hides were treated before shipment to the tannery to preserve them, often with salt, to protect it from putrefying.  Before curing the hide was referred to as "green" and after salting, "green salted."

Hides were classified mainly by size and weight.  A skin is simply a small hide.  In the case of cattle, a hide weighing less than 15 pounds when green was called a calf skin.  Between 15 and 30 pounds it was called a "kip".  Over 30 pounds it was called a hide.  A hide less than 53 pounds was called a "light cow" and over 53 pounds a "heavy cow".  You can see these hides were usually heavy.

The diagram below illustrates the designation of the parts of the hides.

The terminology of hides was actually way more involved but that will do for the purpose of explaining the tannery processes for my model.  Different size hides and different parts of the hides were used to produce different types of leather, and for different purposes.

Tannerys also had preferences as to what packing plants they acquired hides from and generally preferred large packing plants which tended to have more experienced butchers who performed the process of flaying the hides from the animal with less damage to the hides.  Further, most hides in 1939 were obtained from US plants though some were imported from other countries.  Larger packing plants also often had workmen who specialized in flaying particular parts of the animal thus providing better results for the hide.  The parts are identified in the diagram above.