Purchasing a Leather Motorcycle Jacket
Understanding the Tanning Process

Over the years, leather has become the accepted standard for motorcycle jackets, most notably due to its durability and resistance to tear. In the event of a long slide over an asphalt pavement, the only thing between you and the road are your clothes. Leather jackets, chaps, and pants have proven to save many a hide, leaving the accident victim to deal only with broken bones, and not having to rebuild their skin as well.

Leather is an excellent natural material for use as a motorcycle jacket, but just as leather originates from a variety of animals, the buyer should be aware that the type of skin and how it is prepared are the determining factors for the suitability, or riding grade of a motorcycle jacket.

Tanning Leather Then and Now

The purpose of tanning an animals skin is first of all to stop the decay process that exists with all organic matter, and to render the resulting material pliable enough to be used in the production of such consumables as furniture, shoes, handbags and belts, and of course, leather motorcycle jackets.

Tanning is an ancient technology, one that at times involved the use of urine, feces, and brains, and was such a stinky, dirty process, that tanneries were often banished to the outskirts of towns, their jobs being reserved for only the lowest class citizens.

The modern tanning facilities have come a long way in cleaning up their act, yet the by products and waist produced by the tanning process has long been known to be toxic, and were considered by awakening populations as environmental hazards.

As a result of this new environmental consciousness (not to mention the incredible amounts of money to be saved outsourcing to cheap labor), a good 90% of a leather tanning and manufacturing today is done in India, Pakistan, and more recently, China, where as seen in the recent past, progress outweighs environmental concerns.

The good news is that in 2006, the American Chemical Society announced the greening of the tanning industry by introducing a reverse tanning process, essentially starting at the end of the process and working backwards. The results claim to take almost half as much time, use over 50% less chemicals, less energy and water, and cut the release of pollutants into the environment by 79%.

The Tanning Process

The actual tanning of leather is the second step of a three part process of preparing animal hides.

The first step is the preparation of the hide, known as beamhouse operations, which include the soaking, trimming, removing the excess meat and flesh, and the dehairing of the hide, if it is indeed to be hairless.

The tanning process, or Tanyard, consists of baiting and pickling, then the actual tanning of the hides is done through either Vegetable tanning, or the Chrome Tanning process.

While vegetable tanning is the oldest method of tanning used in the industry today, most leather today is produced by the chrome tanning method, which takes much less time than vegetable tanning, and produces a softer, more pliable leather.

It is what follows the tanning process that determines the quality, or for our purposes, the riding grade of the hide. At this point, it would behoove us to understand the term grain, as it pertains to the leather industry. The grain of a hide refers to the outer part of the skin, the epidermis. This is what gives leather its strength and durability, its suppleness, and breathablility.

At this point the hides are wrung, and graded for thickness and quality. In the best of hides, the grain is left in tact with only the hair removed. If the entire hide is remains intact, it is what is known as full grain leather, and can reach thicknesses of up to 2mm.

Hides to become top grain garments are selected, then the lower side (the flesh side) is sliced and sent off to be retanned as splits. Riding grade top grain leather can be anywhere from 1.1 to 1.5mm thick.

A top grain hide where the grain is shaved down to remove imperfections is called corrected grain. After the grain leathers are shaved to the desired thickness, they are separated and sent for retanning, dyeing, and fatliquoring, the process of reintroducing oils into the skin that have been depleted by the tanning process.

The leather finishing process can take a variety of directions. In the case of naked leather, aniline dye is introduced to the grain hide and the process is done. Pure aniline full grain hides are of the best quality, and account for only about 5% of the worlds hide supply.

Other methods of finishing include buffing with abrasives to produce a suede texture, a method commonly used on splits, or applying a coat of urethane to produce what is known as patent leather. Hides can be treated with resins, pigments and dyes to produce the desired color and finish, and plating is used to bond the coating materials to the grain. In the case of split leather where there is no grain, a pattern is commonly embossed on the hide to mimic the natural grain.