Written by Bill Manning

What’s going on everyone? I sure am glad it’s Friday! I guess I’ll have a stay at home weekend, gas is costing too much. Well today I thought I would dive into the whole shearling jackets and coats mess and try to explain just what your getting when you buy one. What is shearling? As always there is fake and real shearling, and good and bad ways to make it.

What is really surprising is the vast cost difference between good quality shearling coats and jackets and a lower grade one. A nice full shearling coat that is quality made can be over 1,000 dollars. A low grade or fake shearling jacket can be bought for 50 bucks! Most fall somewhere in between there, from 100 to 500 bucks.

The best thing is to start right from the beginning and explain just what real shearling coats and jackets are. Many seem to think it is a lambskin jacket, wrong. Some think it’s a leather jacket with wool attached, wrong, at least for real shearling coats. Some don’t even think it’s real wool, wrong again. So here’s how a real shearling coat is made, and the different variations of it. (more…)

Hey everyone, what’s going on? Today I thought I’d write a quick post about biker conchos for your leather jacket and other leather items. Now just what is a concho, and what does it do? A concho is just for decoration, nothing more. It serves no real purpose other than looking good. Silver conchos are very popular.

A concho for leather does not act as a button, or snap, or any other practical thing. It’s just for making your leather jacket or item look better. It does a pretty good job of it too, as you see almost all leather saddle bags, tool bags and leather jackets with conchos. You can easily add conchos anywhere you want on your leather. The really cheap ones are just stamped tin or thin metal, glued or threaded on.

The good ones are made of brass, stainless steel, nickel plated and copper. They are thick and have some wight to them. The cheap ones are light and can rust and bend. A good leather biker conchos attaches by a screw backing, or it is made with slots to be tied to the leather with leather braid, giving it an even better look. Some can be made to be the button heads of snaps too.

This is a concho made to be tied to the leather with leather braiding. Once the leather braid is threaded through normally you leave a length of it so that once it’s tied you have two lengths of leather hanging down from it for a nice look. Leather conchos can be put anywhere you want them. On a leather jacket normally the top center of the back is a popular spot for a concho. Sometimes it’s put in the center of a leather braid pattern. (more…)

I hope everyone is having a good Memorial day weekend, grilling and chilling. Just don’t forget what it’s all about, the Veteran’s that make it possible for you to do whatever you want to do here freely. Well I’ve talked a lot about how leather is made and leather jackets, so today I’ll talk a bit about leather bags that are made for your motorcycle.

Now then, motorcycles don’t have much in the way of built in storage space, so there has been a lot of different types of bags that you can strap on, bolt on, tie on, throw on or however else you can manage to keep a bag or pocket on your bike. There are basically 5 different types of standard bags that fit on different parts of a motorcycle.

These are leather motorcycle saddle bags, motorcycle tool bags, leather sissy bar bags, windshield bags and leather motorcycle luggage or travel bags. Now they come in lots of different sizes and shapes, so you need to really measure your bike and pick what ones fit the best. Some places have bags made for different brands of motorcycles, but most are a “one size fits all” deal. (more…)

What is a suede leather jacket or coat? What type of hide or animal does suede leather come from? Is suede real leather? Where are my blue suede shoes? Sorry, couldn’t resist that last one! Most people have NO idea what suede really is. So, I’m going to tell you right now! Unfortunately that word has been mangled so much that you can go to 10 different sites and find 10 different meanings.

Suede is real leather; that is, it comes from animal hide. Anything made from the hide of any animal is leather. Rawhide bones are leather, so is bindings on a snowshoe. So the name suede refers to the TYPE of leather it is. Now if you read my other post on how leather hides are split, you know that good quality leather is the top part.

A cows hide, or most any animal’s, is so thick that they split the hide, making a top grain, which is the part the hair was on, and has the natural leather grain pattern in it. The bottom part is called the split leather. If a hide is really thick they may make 2 or 3 split layers. Suede leather is ALWAYS made from split leather. (more…)

How’s everyone doing today, out riding the Harley? I’m stuck in here, writing this post, lol. Well, now that I’ve explained how to get the best leather for a leather jacket, I’ll explain a bit about all the leather hardware that goes into a leather jacket. Hardware is anything that is sewn, stamped, snapped, crimped or otherwise attached to a leather jacket, or other leather product.

It can be the zipper, conchos, button snaps, studs, buckles, anything. There are special leather tools made to work this stuff into the leather. Anything that is just forced through the leather makes it weak and likely to tear. Leather tools cut the small holes and so on needed to attach the hardware.

Now, the last thing you want is to have your hardware rust! Not only will that render the hardware useless, it will destroy the leather around it. Real cheap leather is sometimes made with hardware that rust, I call it rustware. Also the thickness of the hardware determines how good it is. A thin cheap snap will pull out or stop snapping together. (more…)

So you’ve got your brand new leather jacket, great. Now you might be wondering what you need to do to it. Should you waterproof it? Put some kind of treatment on it, what? A leather jacket is not hard to maintain, but it does require a little more upkeep than a nylon jacket that you never do anything to.

There is a lot of products on the market for leather, some good and some crap. So I’ll tell you the steps you should take for protecting your leather jacket, conditioning your leather jacket and cleaning your leather jacket. The very first thing you should do to your new leather jacket or leather item is to apply a protector to it. (more…)

Well in this post I’m going to tell about the last step leather takes. First we picked what animal we want the leather from. Then we picked how we want the leather split and how much if any we want the leather smoothed. Now we need to color and treat the leather.

Just like in the first steps different treatments can be good or bad. I’ve seen some really bad leather jackets where the first time it got rained on all the brown color washed out like water paint! The treatment and tanning process is actually a lengthy process. I’m not going to get into all the steps, only the basic ones you should know.

How a hide is colored and treated will determent how good the coloring holds up, and what the leather is called. You want to know what the difference is between a naked leather jacket and a vegetable dye leather jacket. There are lots of sales pitch terms also, like “super dyed”, “fully treated” and so on. Let’s take a look at the common types. (more…)

Hi everyone. Well in my last post I told about what different animals leather comes from. So let’s say from that you have decided you want a cowhide leather jacket. Great, good choice. Are you going to get one that is top grain, top grade, split leather, naked leather, aniline or patchwork?

Oh no, not more confusing stuff! Yes, leather can be tricky like I’ve said. Now you can see just how little people understand when they go out and get that “top grade leather jacket”. But it’s not that hard once it’s been explained, and I’ll do that right now for you.

As you know leather is just the hide, the skin of the animal. Different areas of the animal has stronger or thicker hide than others. Take a look at that picture at the top. That shows you the basic sections they use for making a leather product. The sides are the most thickest and strongest and more uniform in texture. (more…)

So your ready to get a quality, genuine leather jacket, fine. What type of leather are you going to get? Huh, I thought leather was, uh, leather, right? Wrong! The reason you see so many different prices for leather jackets is because of the different types of leather that they use to make them. There are 3 basic differences to leather.

One is how it’s tanned and treated. There are several different ways they do that, all of them having strong and weak points. Two is what part of the animal did the leather come from, and has it been split, sanded or stitched together. But before all that comes the most basic step, what animal did the leather come from.

Any hide of an animal can be called leather. You can take the feathers off of a chicken, tan the hide and call it genuine leather. But do you want a leather jacket made from chickens? No, I did not think so! Here I will discuss the most common types of animals used for good quality leather jackets and other leather products. (more…)

So why should you buy a leather jacket, or any other type of leather product? With all the new synthetic fabrics and even fake “leather” shouldn’t you be able to buy stuff that looks better and wears better than leather? The answer quite simply is, no!

You have to think about what leather is. Leather is skin, from an animal. It was a membrane that at one time was alive, growing and forming. Leather is treated organic matter, not some stuff made from heated vats of chemicals. You just can’t improve on real living cells.

Because leather was alive, it can breath, at least to some extent. It was made to protect the cow, or buffalo, or whatever animal it came from. Protect it from the cold, wind, thorns, scratches and other stuff. Once you wear it, it then protects you as it did the animal. (more…)

Hi, and welcome to leather supreme. I’ve been selling and working with all things leather for years. Leather jackets, vest, coats, saddle bags, ladies purses, wallets and all that good stuff! I even use to airbrush designs on leather jackets and vest.

In this blog I want to share all the information I have collected over the years, and maybe once again sell a few leather jackets and other leather items. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about leather that really ticks me off, and I hope to set that right in here. So welcome and I hope you learn a few things before you buy your next leather jacket!