Tag: leather

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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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Leather hardware for leather jackets

Leather hardware for leather jackets

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. Continue reading Leather hardware for leather jackets

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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

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How leather is made

leather hides


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. Continue reading How leather is made

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Leather made from different animals

Leather from different animals

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. Continue reading Leather made from different animals