Whitepaper Leather Tightness

How to influence tightness during post-tanning processing?

Obtaining a tight grain while maintaining all aesthetic and functional characteristics may be difficult enough, to reduce the rejection rate by a small percentage only may seem impossible. To achieve this factors influencing grain tightness need to be understood. Improving on tightness in most cases means an increase in cutting yield and thus a higher profit.

For this whitepaper the focus is on the influence of post-tanning processing. The various influences of the previous steps are too varied to discuss in a general way. Moreover, a lot of crust is made from Wet Blue of outside origin. Where it comes from and how it was made is not always known and the material available needs to be taken as a given fact. Retanning and fatliquoring processes need to be developed for the leathers available under consideration of their peculiarities.