Hide Size

[Cutfingers]

Usually I buy 8/9 oz or 3/4 oz tooling leather or buffalo to make my ball bags and/or shooting bags. The hides are usually 20 to 25 sq. ft. Now my question is how do they get the upholstery leather hide in 48 + sq ft and why can I not find tooling leather hides in those larger sizes?

 

[necchi]

I think,,(ouch) it's because the heavy stuff only comes from select areas of an older animal.
(Older, Mature Breeding stock?)
Where as Upolstery stuff comes from a typical slaughter aged Cow, usually younger to keep cost down and profit up,
I'm not in that business, but that's my hunch.

 

[SpottedBull]

that veg tan, I think, is only a side of leather...like only one side of the cow. Not sure why they only tan it half at a time. It could be the process, but I ain't no tanner. I wish I could get a whole hide veg tanned too.

 

[Comrade Coffin]

Good day folks, an animal's hide varies in thickness over different parts of the body, with shoulders and backs giving the larger gauge of skin. Upholstery leather is generally thin, and so the thicker areas can be skived or trimmed or rolled to give a big sheet of uniform skin. The only way to get great big sheets of thick leather may be to try & laminate several skins (like they did for English Civil war buff coats), but I would imagine that this would be a difficult task.

 

[Cutfingers]

I have a hunch that Spotted Bull hit it on the head. I had forgotten that Veg Tan is usually advertised as "sides". So put two veg tanned sides togather and you come up with the 45-50 sq. ft. hide.
Great input so far. Thanks everyone.

 

[omarick1948]

That is the reason that veg-tan leather comes by the half hide. There's no point selling the whole hide, as most just buy two halves or more at a time!

Most, if not all of the veg-tan tooling leather is imported today and upholstery leathers come from mostly US Packing house's, but their is the lesser quality leathers steadily being imported also. Probably 99% of the leather than Tandy sells is imported!

I have a friend who owns two Tandy franchise's and explained this to me!

Rick

 

[LaBonte]

FYI your friend may work for Tandy but some of his info is off the mark. Yes Tandy?LF does sell mostly imports and mostly South American or Mexican - quality varies considerably some times good but unfortunately more often mediocre, but there are still two major tanners of veg-tan leather in the US, Wickett & Craig and Herman Oak Leather, both offer premium quality hides that are used by the majority of professional leather crafters. There are also some very good hides imported from Europe - RJF Leathers sells some of the best hides I've used in the last 20 years which are old style pit tanned hides from Portugal.
As for upholstery hides the best come from France or Italy. There are a couple of tannerys in the US that do upholstery hides, but due to the EPA regs most tanneries of either veg or chrome tanned leather have had to close in the US and those like Herman Oak have had to re-do there process to meet the standards.

Upholstery hides are left full size because of the large areas often needed to be covered without piecing, plus they are split thin before tanning making them much easier to handle.
Veg tan, most of which now comes from yearlings with a few tanneries handling larger/older bull hides, on the other hand is generally left at full thickness when being tanned so being split makes them easier to handle. Thinner sizes are generally split from thicker hides after tanning.