Tag: leather hides

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Leather jacket thickness and toughness

Leather jacket thickness

I recently had an email from someone who wanted to know if a leather jacket I had was really tough, not a soft leather jacket. He seemed to indicate that if a leather jacket was soft to the touch it was not a tough leather jacket. So I thought I’d clear up that question in a post today.

How tough, or long lasting a leather jacket is depends on several things, but softness is not one of them. Leather that is soft and flexible to the touch has just been treated very well to get that way. The real test of how rugged a leather jacket is depends on the type of hide, the layer of the hide used and how thick the hide is.

A top grain leather is the layer of hide at the top, where the hair use to be. That layer is the strongest part of the hide. Leather hides are always split into several layers. The layers below the top grain is the split grain leather, which is a bit weaker than the top layer.
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What countries do we get leather hides from?

where do leather hides come from?


Time for another post from Uncle Bill here! Just in case you were wondering, I have not been getting much of that storm from hurricane Fay here in Orlando. It really flooded parts of the coast and all, but Orlando is in the middle of the state. So we have a steady rain, but no real storm or flooding here.

So on with the post of today, which is, just where does all our leather come from? I don’t mean what animal, I mean who produces it, tans it and so on. What county or countries are the biggest suppliers of leather in the USA? If you think most come from right here, your wrong, and the top country that produces leather may surprise you.

Most of the leather jackets you see in any store was made outside of the USA. That pretty much is the way most everything is today. Even Harley-Davidson has their leather apparel made outside the USA. Now that does not mean it’s not quality. Leather made outside the USA can be the finest quality. In fact most quality leather in the USA is imported, simply because most leather is imported. Continue reading What countries do we get leather hides from?