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.