Leather-Manufactures. s. 335-340 (View of the Russian Empire. Improving Industry.)

View of the Russian Empire, During the Reign of Catharine the Second, and to the Close of the Eighteenth Century.
By William Tooke, F. R. S.
Member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and the Free Economical Society at St. Petersburg. In three volumes. Vol. III.
The Third Edition.
Dublin: Printed by P. Wogan, No. 23, Old-Bridge.
1801

¹ The principal places where, next to Mosco and Petersburg, the most yufts are prepared, are: Arsamas, Kostroma, Yaroslaf, Picove, Kazan, Vologda, Nishney Novgorod, Vladim, Ekatarinenburg, &c. In England they go under the general name of Russia leather.No trade in Russia is of so antient a date and so extended as this. The excellent, yufts which are peculiar to Russia, are everywhere sufficiently known ¹. They have also the art of preparing several other sorts of leather of extraordinary quality. The chief products of the tanneries of this country, as before observed, are the YUFTS.

In the preparation whereof they proceed in the following manner: the raw oxhides are first laid in running water, or in large tan-pits full of water dug in the earth for that purpose, to soak for a whole week; but in summer not so long. During this time they are daily taken out of the water, and scraped at a scraping-bench or wooden horse. Having now been duly steeped, they are put into a lye, thus prepared. In other vats, likewise dug in the ground and under cover, they mix two parts of good ashes with one part of unslacked lime, in boiling water, and sink the wet hides in this lye on a grating, which being suspended by cords, can be raised or let down at pleasure. In this vat the hides are laid again for about a week, though in warm weather less, in cold perhaps even longer. The sign that they have lain long enough in the lye is, that the hair can without difficulty be rubbed off with the hand, so that none remains.

If the hides, after the expiration of a week, are not in that condition, fresh ashes are put into the lye, and the skin sunk in it. But if at length the hair be sufficiently loose, the hides are entirely taken out of the lye, and all the hair scraped off on a stretching-block by means of blunt iron scrapers with two handles. The hair is washed clean and sold for domestic uses. The hides, thoroughly cleansed from hair, are suspended in vats of clean water on a running stream, where they remain three days, diligently turning them to and fro, in order to purge them from the ashes and lye, afterwards they are hung up and left to drain. The hides must now be scraped on the flesh side. To this end they employ either the aforesaid scraping-iron, or others sharper in various degrees. After this treatment the hides are trampled.

² A circumstantial account of the yuft-tannery in Murom (which agrees in the main with what we are here describing) is given by professor Lepekhin, in the journal of his travels, tom. 1. p. 24. and of the tannery of the Baschkirs, tom. ii. p. 24.But calves-hides have another sort of preparation, which the yuft-tanners in the interior towns of the empire who mostly practise it, call rakscha. This preparation is performed with the white excrement of dogs dried, which is dissolved in boiling-water, and to a hundred hides about four vedros full of excrement is the rule. If here the right proportion with the water be not found, the hides corrupt in this slime, the object whereof seems to be the complete freeing of the skin from the salts that adhere to it from the lye. The hides are left to lie twice twenty-four hours. With this is stirred a four gruel of oatmeal with warm water, and to three ofmics, or eighths of a chetverik, three or four vedros of dregs of the common quas which the people make of meal and a small portion of malt, put in the thin gruel that it may quickly four with the hides. To ten hides the tanners usually reckon forty pounds of meal².

After the hides have soured, which is done in large vats, they are laid in other vats and well steeped for two or three days in a strong tan-juice, fok, thoroughly boiled from good bark. When this is done they are brought straight to the tan. In the tan-pits, in which often some hundreds of hides are lying, is poured half water and half tan, or water boiled with tan, and a grating is hung in with cords, having one hide after the other spread upon it, thick strewed with good fine-pounded tan, and the grating constantly let deeper into the pit, till it be nearly full; yet so that the tan-liquor is always above the hides, which are then again sprinkled over with tan. In this tan the hides continue to lie a week; those of full-grown animals longer. On being taken out, they are washed and trampled on, which two workmen in a summer's day can perform with three hundred hides.

The next day they are laid, in the manner above described, in fresh tan. Thus they generally get four times successively fresh tan, and are every time rinsed clean. In the last tan they lie three weeks or longer, are then finally washed, hung up, and, when they have tolerably drained, delivered to those workmen whose business it is in particular workshops to dye, dress, and wax the yufts, and to deliver the goods finished.

It is to be observed, that the Russian yuft-tanners seldom use oak-tan, and never willingly. The choicest and best tan is that of the Tschernotal, as they call it, or the black willow, and also the young bark peeled off from the other shrubby willows, which are collected by the boors, dried in bundles, and brought in cart-loads to market. To ten hides the tanners compute one and a half fathom of these bundles of willow bark as they are laid one upon another for sale, through all the tans.

It must not however be imagined that the excellence of the Russian yufts depends on this; for in Siberia, where are no oaks, and but few willows of any size, they tan yufts with only birch-bark, which are not much worse than the Russian. The bark is made small by either ordinary tan-mills, turned by horses or by water; or the tanner himself in many towns where are no mills, causes it, at unnecessary expence and labour, to be pounded in wooden mortars or excavated blocks, with pestles, almost like those in the tanmills, y day-labourers.

The dyeing of the yufts is performed in two ways and of two colours. The commonest and most natural custom of giving the colour to the hides, is, by sewing them together in pairs, the hair-side inwards, while they are yet moist, round the edges, with rushes or stripes of bark, thus forming them into a bag or sack; into this sack the colour is put, the sack well shook and the superfluous dye let to run out, whereupon the skins are dried.

From this method of dyeing them, it seems to proceed that the yufts are called and taken by pairs. The other process, whereby much trouble, time, and colour are saved, and the edges of the skin entirely preserved, is the following: Each skin is hung upon a horse over a long trough, so that the hair side, which must be stained, appears outwards, pouring the dye upon it out of the dye-kettle, till the whole skin is dyed.

The two colours given to the yufts are red and black. The red dye is thus prepared: Pound brazil-wood (sandal) in the pounding-mill, or with hand-pestles, as fine as the tan, and boil it in kettles. Previous to the dyeing, steep the skins in alum-water. It is calculated, that to each finall yuft-skin a half, and to a large one a whole pound of logwood is put. But the latter are mostly coloured black.

To a hundred yufts to be dyed red, four pounds of alum is sufficient. For dyeing black the brazil-wood is likewise used; but in the red dye to a hundred skins three pounds of good iron vitriol is dissolved. After the first tincture the skins are dried, and afterwards on tables done over again with the same dye and rolled up, that they may thoroughly imbibe the dye. For heightening the colour this tincture is sometimes thrice repeated. When the skins are now tolerably dried, by hanging, that the colour may not fade, with the flesh side outwards, the yufts, still somewhat moist, are smeared over on tables that have ledges.

There was a time when it was commanded by authority to use nothing but dolphin and seal-blubber for smearing them; but by that the yufts are harsher and have not that yuft-smell, which foreigners prize so much, unless the birch-tar, deggot, prepared in Russia, at least be mixed with it. At present this birch-tar alone is used for smearing.

This done, the skins are cleansed from any impurities that may remain, and are sent to the dressing-house, where skilful workmen scrape them first with scraping-irons having two handles with the edge cross-wise on a stretching-bench, that a soft thin leather remains with a clear glossy surface free from all impurities. Other workmen then take the clean-scraped yufts on large clean tables, sprinkle them on the flesh-side with a gentle shower of fresh water from their mouths, and lay them flightly rolled up to moisten.

³ Others think this chequered impression is communicated by a steel cylinder, a foot long and three inches in diameter, wound round with a multitude of wires, and in weight 300 or 400 pounds. Vide Beaufobre, finanzw. tom. i. p. 246.

⁴ Pallas, Peterso. journ. tom. i. p. 61.This done, the skins are taken separately one after another, folded together, and worked and calendered in all directions to make them soft and pliant. They are then curried with a kind of wooden curry-comb, with sharp irons fixed in leathers, like a card for carding wool, the skin being folded with the hair side-outwards, by which the whole surface of the yufts acquire the cross strokes or trellis-like marks they are always seen to have³. Some work the skins with the hands first dry, not sprinkling them till they are mangled with the card.

Lastly, those skins which are too harsh and stiff to the feeling, are more or less sprinkled with linseed oil, and thus are ready for the merchant⁴.