Herrenway — Leather Shoe Construction | herrenway.com
From hide to tanning and crusting, and what full-grain actually means.
Leather is a strong, flexible and durable material obtained by tanning animal skins to prevent decay, and it has been made for more than 7,000 years. The most common leathers come from cattle, sheep, goats, equine animals and buffalo.
Leather manufacturing has three fundamental stages — preparatory stages, tanning and crusting — plus an optional finishing stage. Preparatory work cleans and prepares the hide; tanning converts it so it will not rot; crusting dries and stabilises the material; finishing adds surface properties.
Chrome tanning was developed in the latter half of the 19th century to make production faster and leather more waterproof. It remains one of the main tanning routes alongside vegetable tanning.
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Full-grain leather keeps the outer fibre layer of the hide, the densest part of the material, which is why it resists abrasion and develops a patina rather than flaking.
Bonded leather is different: the amount of leather fibres in the mix varies from 10% to 90%, so two bonded products can behave very differently depending on their fibre share.
The grain layer, the tanning route and the crusting quality together determine how the leather on a shoe wears over years of flexing.
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