Smoking leather

[Stophel]

Maybe an odd question, but would there be any advantage to smoking vegetable tanned cowhide leather, as with brain tanned? Would it even work?

 

[paulab]

I think if you smoked any kind of leather it would make you sick. A friend of mine tried to smoke fish and his breath stunk for weeks. :haha:

 

[omarick1948]

I think the real advantage would be to just add a little color to it! __ It might help for resisting a little moisture, but I don't know!

Rick

 

[Stophel]

Supposedly, smoking imparts an oil to the leather, which bonds with it, and makes the leather more resistant to water. Not meaning waterproof, but keeping it from getting stiff or cracking when the leather gets wet and dries out.

The immediate project that had me thinking about it was that I am going to make heavy leather soles for some "Ligonier-type-moccasins", and I wondered if it would be advantageous to smoke the soles.
:hmm:

 

[Bill Austin]

Smoking is a type of aldehyde tanning, it's the smoke that actually tans the leather but oil must be added to make the leather soft. Brains are just a source of oil. Bark tan or vegetable tan are a different type of tan but still require oil to soften them. Smoking a hide only allows it to resoften after getting wet it doesn't do anything to help soften.

 

[Loxahatchee]

Is vegetable tanning similar to bark tanning? If it is, then there is no need to smoke the leather. If I remember correctly, bark-tanned leather is frequently used as the soles of moccasins.

Braintan is smoked so that if the leather gets wet, it can be re-stretched and softened. It is the aldehydes in the smoke I believe that "lock" the stretched and softened fibers of the hide.

From what I have read, folks that wear moccasins a lot will try to keep all of the leather oiled, inside and out, as part of regular care. Oiling the leather keeps it supple and helps repel water. You can use any kind of oil really, tallow has been used forever. If you want to try and keep them even more water-resistant, you can warm up some wax and rub that into the leather.

 

[Bill Austin]

Bark tanning and veg. tanning are pretty much the same.

 

[Stophel]

Vegetable tanning is the term used to cover any number of tanning methods using vegetable material to get tannic acid. The classic way is, of course, to use Oak bark (sometimes acorns even), chestnut bark, or the bark of other trees. I believe Hemlock used to be used extensively. Now, actual oak tanned leather is harder to come by, but it can be found. I was told by someone at Tandy that usually "Veg tanned" leather was tanned using Mimosa, which, depending upon the source, is native of either Asia or Australia (perhaps both). Yep, that invasive, aggressively growing, pink flowered tree is actually good for something! :haha: