Hide Splitting

Hide Splitting 

in leather production, an operation that consists of separating the semifinished leather into several (usually two or three) layers.

Hides are split in order to obtain leather of a particular regular thickness. The intermediate product that will be used for shoe uppers, saddlery, and harness-making is usually split, as are the shoulder hides of the bull and boar. The semifinished leather may be split at various stages of its treatment: as rawhide, after chrome tanning, or when dry (during the finishing process). In currying pigskin with a dressed outer surface, the hide is split when dry in order to remove the thin grain layer with its typical, strongly pronounced grain. The hides are split on band hide-splitting machines; the stretched semifinished product, clamped between rollers, is forced onto a band knife, which is moving rapidly in a horizontal plane.

L. P. GAIDAROV