Leather is a noble material that requires precision and quality work throughout the process of transforming hides into leather.
Radermecker Tannery shares with you the stages of leather production carried out within its new buildings and thanks to its new machines: "The mechanical work".
The splitting of hides
The hides are "sawed white", meaning that the wet white hides are reworked by a machine called a "slitter" to even out the thickness of the hide.
On the video, these are entire back which are split.
We take special care of our hides, and therefore only use the full grain to ensure the quality of our leathers.
The spinning of leathers
The leathers are taken out of the drums but they remain loaded with water.
Our craftsmen will then pass them into the wringer, which, by pressure, will remove the excess water contained in the leathers.
Radermecker leather spinning machine was renewed during the move to the the move to the new buildingswith Mr. Hafid Bourouiss Hafid Bourouiss - Tannery Projects. This new machine has 2 felt rollers and a winding roller. The purpose of this machine is to extract the water from the leather. The wind roller allows to open the pores of the leather while ensuring a fast drying.
The smoothing of leathers
After the spinning stage, the leathers are smoothed in order to limit wrinkles and folds on the grain side of the leather.
This also stretches the full grain fibers of the leather on the surface.
This step is commonly called "winding".
Stretching of Boyoma stretched saddle leather
The Boyoma stretched leather is a wet-worked leather positioned on frames. Under tension, it minimizes its elasticity and elongation, and increases its absorption of direct stress without altering its tensile strength. This makes it ideal for stirrups and grith straps.
The leather remains stretched on the frame for 1 full week.
