Tag: jacket

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Do leather jackets keep you warm?

does leather motorcycle jackets keep you warm?


Hi everyone, hope your having a good weekend. I always go through my stats, which tell me what people are typing in to get to my little site here. That gives me a good idea of what people want to know. A lot seem to ask if a leather jacket will keep you warm. So I’ll explain a bit about that today.

Of course right now in the middle of summer you don’t need a warm jacket, but it will not be long before all you folks up north will be feeling cold. Since I’m from Vermont I know all about being cold! Plus I’m the type that gets cold easy, which is why my ass is down here in Florida. So, does a leather jacket keep you warm?

I wondered myself about that before I ever got my first leather jacket. Now as with anything, it depends on what kind of leather jacket it is, and what it has for a liner. Let’s just assume it’s a basic leather motorcycle leather jacket, or a bomber jacket. Those are the most popular and what most people are asking about. Continue reading Do leather jackets keep you warm?

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Suede leather jackets & coats

What is suede leather jackets & coats


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. Continue reading Suede leather jackets & coats

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Care & cleaning your leather jacket

care and cleaning your leather jacket

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. Continue reading Care & cleaning your leather jacket

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Naked leather and aniline

how to color leather


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. Continue reading Naked leather and aniline