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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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leather hide thickness in leather jackets

thickness of leather hides in leather jackets

Hi everybody. I thought I’d make a quick post today about leather thickness after Curt asked about his buffalo leather jacket vs his cowhide one. Now as I’ve said many times, a leather hide is split into two or more layers when they process it. The top layer that had the hair on it is called the top grain layer. The other layers below it are the split grain layers.

So just how thick do they make the splits? How do they know how thick to make them? Well after all these years of making leather, the leather industry has come up with some standards for leather hide thicknesses. There basically are three main thickness levels, with some differences in each one.

The three levels are:
1.0 mm (or less) used for fashion leathers, purses and so on.
1.3 mm (1.3 to 1.5 average) This is the most common for motorcycle jackets and riding leather.
2.0 mm only used in Naked Leather.
So lets review those levels a bit more, shall we? Continue reading leather hide thickness in leather jackets