The Story of Leather Part 13

"I'm worse off than you, Nat," chuckled Peter. "I've no idea at all."

"Nonsense, Peter! By this time you must know the general process for preparing skins."

"Why, yes. I suppose the hair is taken off and the skins tanned just as calfskins are."

"Yes, the main facts are the same. There are many points, however, where the processes differ because the skins of sheep, kids, goats, and such creatures must undergo entirely different treatment. The kid used for gloves and even for shoes, you see, is far more delicate than is the calfskin that we have been finishing."

"Yes, of course," agreed Peter thoughtfully. "Well, I suppose we shall now find out all about it and that it will be interesting; but I do wish, Nat, that we could learn it somewhere except in another beamhouse."

Peter's wish, alas, was of no avail and accordingly once more the two boys donned rubber boots and overalls and started again at the foot of the ladder--this time in Factory 2, where the skins of sheep, kids, and goats were tanned. Sheepskins, they soon learned, were received by the tanners in one of two conditions: either the wool was already off and they arrived in casks drenched or pickled, many bales of one dozen each being packed in a cask; or the skins came to the tannery salted, with the wool on and precisely in the condition that they were when taken from the backs of the sheep at the ranches and abattoirs. So long as the hair was on the skins were called "pelts"; but the moment the hair was removed the skins became "slats." The pickled skins it was simple enough to tan, for they had been carefully prepared for the tanners before being shipped; there were firms, the foreman told Peter, that did just this very thing. If desired the pickled sheepskins could even be worked into a cheap white leather without further tanning. Most of them, however, were tanned.

But the unhairing of the sheep pelts was a different problem. After they had been soaked about twenty-four hours in borax and water to get out the dirt and salt they must first be put through a machine that cleansed the wool and shaved off any fat adhering to the flesh side. Then they were ready to have the wool removed. A very delicate process this was, Peter and Nat soon discovered. Each pelt was spread smoothly on a table wool side down, and a preparation of lime and sulphide of sodium was spread evenly over it with a brush, great care being taken to let none of the liquid used get upon the wool side of the skin. The pelt was then folded and left from eight to ten hours until the solution which had been brushed over it had penetrated it and loosened the hair. The wool could then very easily be pulled off, sorted as the skins were unhaired, and sold to dealers as "pulled wool."

One fact interested Peter very much, and that was that usually the slats were thinnest where the wool was longest.

"I suppose the strength of the sheep all went to its hair," speculated he to Nat. "Isn't it funny that it should!"

Another thing the boys learned about sheepskins which was very different from the treatment of calfskins was that before the slats could be tanned they had to be put through a powerful press and have the grease squeezed out of them.

"The skin of a sheep has a vast amount of oil in it," explained one of the workmen, "and it is impossible to do anything until this grease has been extracted; so we put a bunch of skins under a heavy press and then collect the grease that runs out, refine, and sell it."

Peter and Nat watched this pressing with great interest.

When the skins came out of the press they were so hard and stiff that it was necessary to put them into the revolving drums that separated and softened them. This was called "wheeling up the slats." The odor in the press room was far worse than anything that Peter had yet encountered--much more disagreeable than was an ordinary beamhouse.

Both he and Nat were only too glad when noon time came and they could get out into the air.

"Whew!" cried Peter, throwing himself down in the sunshine, "I hope they don't put us in that press room to work, Nat."

"It's fierce, isn't it?" Nat answered. "The men must hate it."

"I suppose they get accustomed to it just as I got used to the beamhouse," Peter said. "Why, when I began work in the beamhouse of Factory 1 I thought I never could endure it. Do you remember how you tried to cheer me up that first day?"

Nat laughed at the memory.

"Indeed I do. You looked perfectly hopeless, Peter."

"That's about the way I felt," smiled Peter, "and I believe I'd feel so again if I thought I had weeks of that press room smell before me."

But Peter need not have feared any such calamity, for after lunch he and Nat were given a lesson in tanning sheepskins and were told they were to work at that task until further notice.

The process, they discovered, differed very radically from the calfskin treatment with which they were so familiar. Many of the slats were tanned by being laid in trays of fine, moist powder that looked like brown sugar.

"What is this stuff?" inquired Peter of a man who stood near by.

"That is sumac, young man."

"Sumac! Just common sumac?"

"Well, no. It is the same sort of thing, though. We import this from Sicily, because the foreign leaves grow larger and contain more tannin.

Sicilian sumac makes better leather than does the American variety, which comes chiefly from Virginia."

Peter nodded.

"And how long, pray, do the skins lie covered up in this snuffy brown powder?" questioned Nat.

"About a week," answered the man. "We do not tan all sheepskins this way, however. Some, as you will see, are tanned by being suspended from a bar into a vat of quebracho. Others are put into wheels of chrome tan just as calfskins are. White leathers are tanned, or more properly speaking tawed, in a mixture of alum and egg-yolk."

"Egg-yolk!" gasped Peter. "Eggs--such as we eat?"

"I am not so sure that they are such as you would care to eat," grinned the man, "but the yolks come from eggs, nevertheless."

"I should think it would take lots of men to break the eggs fast enough and get them ready," murmured Peter, half aloud.

"Bless your heart! We don't break the eggs here!" roared the workman, shaking with laughter. "No, indeed. We get egg-yolk by the barrel; when we pour it out it looks like thin yellow paint. We tan kid for gloves in egg-yolk," he went on, observing that both Nat and Peter were much interested. "After sheepskins are tanned the leather must all be fat-liquored, dried by steam or air fans, dampened, split or shaved off to uniform thickness, dyed in revolving paddle-wheels filled with color, and tacked on boards to dry just as calfskins are. The chemists who have laboratories up-stairs test the dyes and mix or match the colors for us. Then the skins go to the various rooms for the different finishes. And speaking of finishes, I suppose you went into the buffing-room in the other factory."

"No," said Peter, "we didn't--at least I didn't."

"Nor I," put in Nat. "The door was always closed and no one was admitted."

"They don't like to have people go in if they can help it because every time the door is opened it stirs things up; but I can take you into our buffing-room if you want to go."

"I wish you would," cried Peter.

Accordingly all went up-stairs and their guide cautiously pushed open a door on which NO ADMITTANCE was scrawled in large letters. The moment Peter squeezed through it he drew in his breath and then regretted that he had done so, for he at once began to cough.

The boys glanced about the room before them.

Every window was closed, making the air hot and stuffy; yet, Peter asked himself, how was such a condition to be avoided in a place where it was evident that even the tiniest draught must create instant havoc? This room which Peter and Nat surveyed was thick with flying white particles that were being whirled into s.p.a.ce from rapidly turning emery wheels.

The workmen who were busy buffing the flesh side of split skins in order to get the rough surface required for a suede finish seemed enveloped in a miniature blizzard. As the swiftly turning discs sent clouds of white dust into the air it settled on the hair, faces, eyelashes, and clothing until the laborers looked like snow men moving amid the blinding flakes of an old-fashioned storm. Peter and Nat, who looked on, began to be changed into snow men, too.

"I guess you don't want to stay in here long," announced their guide, raising his voice to be heard above the noise of the revolving wheels.

"As you see, they are making 'suede,' or ooze finished leather. Some calfskins are finished this way too, as of course you know. A certain amount of this leather will be left white for gloves or shoes; more of it, however, will be stretched on boards and brushed over with some colored dye. Suede is made in all sorts of fancy shades for women's party slippers."

Peter nodded and then, quite without warning, he sneezed.

Immediately a cloud of whiteness shot into the air.

"Hurry! Let's get out!" cried Nat. "I'm going to sneeze, too."

The man who was conducting them opened the door a crack and they all three slipped through. Safe in the outer room they stopped and laughingly surveyed one another. All were as white as if sprinkled with powder.

"Goodness!" Peter exclaimed, rubbing his eyelashes. "How can those men breathe? I should think that in a day they would swallow enough dust to fill their lungs up solid."

"They don't mind it."

"Well, I only hope we shan't be put in there to work."

"So do I!" was Nat's fervent rejoinder.