Combing leather

The name applied to the leather used on the combing rolls of cotton machinery and manufactured of calfskin or side leather

Chamois leather

A soft leather originally made from the skins of the Alpine antelope known as the chamois but at the present time from the fleshers of sheepskins. Certain grades used to be used in gloves and fancy articles but the staple employment is for cleaning and polishing, primarily automobile.

Chamois is characterised by an ability to absorb at least three times its own weight of water. Shoemakers, but unlike cordwainers they work with old leather.Cobblers are essentially repairers.

Carding Leather

A special type of side leather used on the cards of cotton machinery. The leather lies flat against the beds of the cards, the teeth being forced through.

California Banknotes

In Two Years Before the Mast Richard Henry Dana describes how he sailed from Boston to California in 1834 to collect hides. He explains how hides are dried and loaded onto the ships before returning to the East Coast. Since California had nothing else of wealth at that time the dried hides were known as California Banknotes. The hides are brought down dry, or they will not be received. When taken from the animal they have holes cut in the ends, and are staked out, and thus dried in the sun without shrinking. They are then doubled once, lengthwise, with the hair side usually in, and sent down upon mules or in carts, and piled above high-water mark: and then we take them upon our heads, one at a time, or two, if they are small, and wade out with them and through them into the boat.

On page 140 of the book detailed at the end is a fine description of the full cure process used to prepare the hides for a wait of over a year before they would get back to Boston around the Cape for tanning. Hides were valued in Boston at 12 and a half cents a pound dry salted and the captain got 1% commission. Ships would spend nearly a year collecting and accumulating hides up and down the California cost to make the journey worthwhile. On Dana's ship they brought back 40,000 hides.

Cabretta Leather

A wrongly named hair sheep. When the Portuguese first went to Brazil they mistook the indigenous hairsheep for goats and called them cabrettas (kids). The skins were exported to the USA by the Blue Funnel Line (later the Booth Group) and the name cabretta stayed with them.

Now all hairsheep skins have taken the generic name cabretta. Much used in footwear leather and sport glove leather.

Buffing

Sandpapering the leather with sandpaper or emery paper for various reasons such as the creation of a suede like nap on suede, a nubuck finish on grain, or for the preparation of corrected grain leather. Sometimes done on the flesh side to tidy up its appearance.