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.
Sammying and Setting-Out
After leaving the drums, the hides are still heavily saturated with water.
They are then passed through a sammying machine, which removes excess water by applying controlled pressure.
This operation is essential to prepare the leather for the following stages of processing.
Our Radermecker sammying machine was renewed during the move to our new facilities, in collaboration with Mr. Hafid Bourouiss – Tannery Projects.
This machine is equipped with two felt rollers and an air-setting roller.
Its role is not only to extract water from the hides, but also to open up the leather’s pores, allowing for faster and more even drying.
The smoothing of leathers
After the sammying and setting-out 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 girth straps.
The leather remains stretched on the frame for 1 full week.
