Tanning, or hide tanning, is the process of treating skins and hides of animals to produce leather. A tannery is the place where the skins are processed. Historically, vegetable based tanning used tannin, an acidic chemical compound derived from the bark of certain trees, in the production of leather. An alternative method, developed in the 1800s, is chrome tanning, where chromium salts are used instead of natural tannins.
History Tanning hide into leather involves a process which permanently alters the protein structure of skin, making it more durable and less susceptible to decomposition and coloring. The place where hides are processed is known as a tannery.
The English word for tanning is from the medieval Latin verb tannāre, from the noun tannum (oak bark). This term may be derived from a Celtic word related to the Proto-Indo-European *dʰonu meaning 'fir tree'. (The same root is the source for Old High German tanna meaning 'fir', related to modern German Tannenbaum). Hide clothing, footwear, and shelters have been used since the Paleolithic, with evidence of leather working dated to approximately 400,000 years ago; leather working tools from this period being found at Hoxne, England dating to about 400,000 years ago. Extant vegetable oil tanned leather footwear, from the neolithic (c. 5,500-year-old), has been found in Areni-1 cave, of Vayots Dzor province of Armenia and on the remains of the Ötzi corpse, found on the Austria-Italy border. Ancient civilizations used leather for waterskins, bags, harnesses and tack, boats, armour, quivers, scabbards, boots, and sandals. Tanning was being carried out by the inhabitants of Mehrgarh in Pakistan between 7000 and 3300 BCE. Around 2500 BCE, the Sumerians began using leather, affixed by copper studs, on chariot wheels. The process of tanning was also used for boats and fishing vessels: ropes, nets, and sails were tanned using tree bark. Formerly, tanning was considered a noxious or "odoriferous trade" and relegated to the outskirts of town, among the poor. Tanning by ancient methods is so foul-smelling that tanneries are still isolated from those towns today where the old methods are used. Skins typically arrived at the tannery dried stiff and dirty with soil and gore. First, the ancient tanners would soak the skins in water to clean and soften them. Then they would pound and scour the skin to remove any remaining flesh and fat. Hair was removed by soaking the skin in urine, painting it with an alkaline lime mixture, or simply allowing the skin to putrefy for several months then dipping it in a salt solution. After the hair was loosened, the tanners scraped it off with a knife. Once the hair was removed, the tanners would "bate" (soften) the material by pounding dung into the skin, or soaking the skin in a solution of animal brains. Bating was a fermentative process that relied on enzymes produced by bacteria found in the dung. Among the kinds of dung commonly used were those of dogs or pigeons. Historically the actual tanning process used vegetable tanning. In some variations of the process, cedar oil, alum, or tannin was applied to the skin as a tanning agent. As the skin was stretched, it would lose moisture and absorb the agent. Following the adoption in medicine of soaking gut sutures in a chromium (III) solution after 1840, it was discovered that this method could also be used with leather and thus was adopted by tanners.
Preparation
The tanning process begins with obtaining an animal skin. When an animal skin is to be tanned, the animal is killed and skinned before the body heat leaves the tissues. This can be done by the tanner, or by obtaining a skin at a slaughterhouse, farm, or local fur trader. Before tanning, the skins are often dehaired, then have fat, meat and connective tissue removed. They are then washed and soaked in water with various compounds, and prepared to receive a tanning agent. They are then soaked, stretched, dried, and sometimes smoked.
Curing Preparing hides begins by curing them with salt to prevent putrefaction of the collagen from bacterial growth during the time lag from procuring the hide to when it is processed. Curing removes water from the hides and skins using a difference in osmotic pressure. The moisture content of hides and skins is greatly reduced, and osmotic pressure increased, to the point that bacteria are unable to grow. In wet-salting, the hides are heavily salted, then pressed into packs for about 30 days. In brine-curing, the hides are agitated in a saltwater bath for about 16 hours. Curing can also be accomplished by preserving the hides and skins at very low temperatures.
Beamhouse operations The steps in the production of leather between curing and tanning are collectively referred to as beamhouse operations. They include, in order, soaking, liming, removal of extraneous tissues (unhairing, scudding and fleshing), deliming, bating or puering, drenching, and pickling.
Soaking In soaking, the hides are soaked in clean water to remove the salt left over from curing and increase the moisture so that the hide or skin can be further treated. To prevent damage of the skin by bacterial growth during the soaking period, biocides, typically dithiocarbamates, may be used. Fungicides such as TCMTB may also be added later in the process, to protect wet leathers from mold growth. After 1980, the use of pentachlorophenol and mercury-based biocides and their derivatives was forbidden.
Liming
After soaking, the hides are treated with milk of lime (a basic agent) typically supplemented by "sharpening agents" (disulfide reducing agents) such as sodium sulfide, cyanides, amines, etc. This:
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