Leather tanning for my tannery

The equipment and scenes shown here are appropriate for my 1939 era tannery.  While more advanced than the early days of tanning,  processes in this era were still labor intensive employing somewhat crude equipment compared with modern tanning machinery.  Below is an illustration of a wooden horse for piling wet leather stock.

Sulfur Dioxide was commonly used in the tanning process in place of sugars previously used, as it simplified the making of tanning liquors producing more even properties from batch to batch and resulting in plumper and fuller leather.  The sulfur dioxide was typically stored in a steel tank by the tannery rail siding with compressed air being used to feed the chemical into the tannery.  Another means of supplying sulfur dioxide to the tannery was by using one-ton metal drums delivered by a railcar such as shown below.

A more complex machine used was a whole-hide splitting machine such as illustrated below.

Tanneries were not known for their neatness and were often quite messy inside.  Below is a picture of stacks of tanned calfskins in a dry loft awaiting selection for coloring.

I am about half way through constructing my tanning building for the tannery.  I could be posting a photo of this in the next week.

Hope everyone has a great new year.