🧰 Leather Making and Tanning

What this course covers

12 modules · 72 written lessons · about 54,251 words · 360 quiz questions · 12 capstone projects.

Every lesson has learning objectives, worked numbers, a "do this today" task and a knowledge check. Videos are free material made by other people; the written lessons are the course.

The Business of Leather

Africa keeps a huge share of the world's cattle, sheep and goats, and captures a far smaller share of the world's hides and skins, and a smaller share again of the world's leather. This module shows you exactly where that value leaks away, using the measured figures from FAO and UNIDO programme evaluations, and shows you which rung of the value ladder you are standing on. Every price in the reference material for this course is pre-2010 or unverified, so this module teaches a costing method and sends you out to price your own market this month.

1. Africa Has the Animals, Not the Hides
2. The Value Ladder and Where You Stand On It
3. What Better Collection and Better Grading Are Worth
4. A Gap Measured Twice, Twenty Years Apart
5. Costing Your Own Operation, Not Copying a Price List
6. Choosing Your Rung and Keeping the Records That Prove It

Open module 1 →

What a Hide Actually Is

Leather is not a material somebody invented. It is an animal's skin with its rot removed and its fibre network permanently changed. This module takes a hide apart layer by layer and fibre by fibre, so that every practical rule later in the course - why the flesh side is weaker, why belly stretches and butt does not, why chemicals must penetrate before they can tan, why a full-grain hide is worth more than a split - becomes something you can reason out rather than memorise.

1. The Three Layers of a Hide
2. Grain and Split - The Two Zones of the Corium
3. The Collagen Weave and Why Leather Is Strong
4. Fat, Species and Why Some Skins Must Be Degreased
5. Butt, Belly and Why One Hide Is Not One Material
6. What Tanning Actually Changes

Open module 2 →

Hide Quality and What Destroys It

Most of the value lost in African leather is lost before a hide ever reaches a tanning drum. This module takes the defects one at a time - tick marks, brand marks, flay cuts, dung staining, rot - and shows you exactly how a real grading system counts them, where it counts them, and how the jump from one grade to the next is decided. It is the module that turns "this hide looks a bit rough" into a number you can argue about with a buyer.

1. Three Windows Where a Hide Is Damaged
2. Flaying Cuts - The Damage You Do Yourself
3. Brand Marks - Where You Burn Decides What It Costs
4. Ticks, Warbles and the Live-Animal Side of Value
5. Reading a Grading System Properly
6. What Quality Is Worth, and the Hazard Hiding in a Cheap Hide

Open module 3 →

Curing the Raw Hide

A freshly flayed hide is a piece of meat with hair on it, and it starts to rot immediately. This module gives you the clock you are racing, the two preservation routes - salt and drying - with every sourced figure for each, the storage rules that keep a cured hide saleable for months, and the safety rule that matters most in this whole trade: never take a hide from an animal that died of an unknown cause, because untreated hides have carried anthrax to the people handling them.

1. The Clock You Are Racing
2. Salt Curing - How Much and Why
3. Piling, Storage Life and Testing the Cure
4. Sun and Air Drying Without Ruining the Hide
5. Curing Failure Cannot Be Undone Later
6. Anthrax - The Hide That Can Kill the Person Handling It

Open module 4 →

The Beamhouse, Part One: Soaking, Liming and Unhairing

The beamhouse turns a cured raw hide into a pelt that a tanning agent can actually reach. This module covers soaking, liming and chemical unhairing, what each one does to the collagen fibre weave, and the one chemical interaction in this trade that kills working adults. Get the separation of sulphide and acid right here and every later module is ordinary work; get it wrong and no other skill in the course matters.

1. From Cured Hide to Pelt
2. Soaking: Bringing the Hide Back
3. Liming: Opening the Fibre Structure
4. Unhairing: Destroy the Keratin, Protect the Collagen
5. Hydrogen Sulphide: The Gas That Stops You Smelling It
6. Running the Beamhouse Safely Every Day

Open module 5 →

The Beamhouse, Part Two: Fleshing, Deliming, Bating and Pickling

The second half of the beamhouse takes a limed, unhaired pelt and hands the tanner something a tanning agent can actually bind to. This module covers fleshing, deliming, bating, degreasing and pickling, what each one does to the collagen fibre weave, and why this is the exact stretch of the process where acid arrives in a workshop that still holds sulphide. Get these four steps right and the tanning module becomes ordinary work; get the pickle wrong and the best tanning agent in the world will not save the hide.

1. Fleshing: Taking Off What Was Never Leather
2. Deliming: Bringing the Alkali Back Down
3. Bating: Enzymes and the Feel of the Grain
4. Degreasing: The Step Fatty Skins Cannot Skip
5. Pickling: Acid, Salt and the Pelt That Is Ready to Tan
6. Running the Acid Side Without Killing Anyone

Open module 6 →

Vegetable Tanning: Bark, Wattle and the Pace of the Pit

Vegetable tanning turns a pickled pelt into leather using plant tannins instead of chemicals a small workshop cannot safely manage. This module covers what tanning actually does to collagen, where African tannin comes from, how a pit or drum tannage is run from weak liquor to strong, and how you test that the tan went all the way through. It also states the honest costs of choosing this route: time, colour and wet-heat resistance.

1. What Tanning Actually Does to a Hide
2. Tannins: Wattle, Mimosa and African Sources
3. The Pit and the Pace: Weak Liquor to Strong
4. Running a Tannage and Proving the Tan Went Through
5. The Honest Tradeoffs: Colour, Heat and Tied-Up Cash
6. Why This Route Suits a Small Rural Workshop

Open module 7 →

Chrome Tanning: Speed, Chromium and What a Small Workshop Must Know

Chrome tanning produces most of the world's leather because it is fast, versatile and heat-resistant in ways vegetable tanning is not. It also brings chromium into your workshop, your effluent and your waste, and it brings one hazard that must be stated precisely rather than dramatically. This module covers how chrome tannage works, the offer and exhaustion figures that decide both your cost and your pollution load, what is actually known about hexavalent chromium, and how to decide honestly whether this route belongs in your operation yet.

1. How Chrome Tanning Works and Why the World Uses It
2. Running a Chrome Tannage: Offer, Float and Basification
3. Exhaustion: The Number That Decides Your Cost and Your Pollution
4. Chrome Recovery and Chrome-Bearing Waste
5. Hexavalent Chromium: Exactly What Is Known
6. Deciding Whether Chrome Belongs in Your Workshop Yet

Open module 8 →

Post-Tanning and Finishing

Tanning stops the hide rotting. It does not make it a saleable leather. Neutralising, retanning, dyeing, fatliquoring, drying, staking and finishing are where a piece of wet-blue or vegetable crust becomes something a shoemaker or a bag maker will pay a premium for. This module teaches that sequence as cause and effect, shows you the levers that cost nothing but discipline, and is honest about the recipe figures that could not be sourced for this course.

1. Neutralising: Taking the Acid Back Out
2. Retanning: Changing the Leather to Suit the Job
3. Dyeing: Colour, and the Choice You Made Months Ago
4. Fatliquoring: Putting the Oil Back In
5. Drying and Staking: Where Softness Is Decided
6. Finishing and Measuring: Reading a Surface, Selling by the Foot

Open module 9 →

Leather Types and What Each Is For

A buyer does not ask for "leather". They ask for full-grain, or top-grain, or a split, or suede, or nubuck, or vegetable-tanned tooling leather, and each of those words carries a different price. This module teaches you what those names actually mean in the anatomy of the hide, how to tell them apart with your hands and a knife cut, and how to match a leather to a product so that neither of you is disappointed six months later.

1. The Grain Layer: Where the Price Lives
2. Splitting: One Hide, Two Materials
3. Buffing, Corrected Grain and Nubuck
4. Reading the Tannage in Your Hand
5. Matching Leather to Product
6. Selling by Name: Honest Declaration and Its Price

Open module 10 →

Leathercraft: Cutting, Stitching and Products That Sell

A finished leather product is the top of the value ladder: the highest value per hide anyone in this chain will ever capture. This module teaches the craft skills that get you there, cutting to the anatomy of the hide, the saddle stitch and why it holds, hardware that does not pull out, edges a customer wants to touch, and a product range a small workshop can actually build and sell. It is also deliberately honest about the technique figures that could not be sourced, and teaches you how to test and settle them for yourself.

1. The Cutting Plan: More Product from One Hide
2. The Saddle Stitch and Why It Holds
3. Settling Your Own Stitch Specification by Test
4. Hardware: Buckles, Rivets, Snaps and Why They Fail
5. Edges and Burnishing: The Part a Customer Touches
6. A Product Range a Small Workshop Can Actually Sell

Open module 11 →

The Workshop and the Business

Everything you have learned so far happens inside a building, uses water, produces waste, and has to pay for itself. This final module covers workshop layout and equipment, water use, effluent and the discharge consent you must obtain before you build, solid waste, quality control and grading, the costing method, records and markets. It is deliberate about two things it will not do: it will not give you a discharge limit as though it were your law, and it will not give you a price to plan on.

1. Workshop Layout: Designing the Hazard Out
2. Effluent: Find Your Authority Before You Build
3. Water, Solid Waste and the Things That Leave Your Workshop
4. Quality Control and Grading
5. Costing: The Method, and Why You Get No Price
6. Records, Markets and What You Do Next

Open module 12 →