FLESHING AND SPLITTING
Fleshing operation consists of removal of unnecessary fragments of tissue, excess watercontaining salt, soluble proteins, impurities and bacteria. It may be considered as squeezing away solution from the solid.
If hair is not completely removed by liming, it must be removed by machine or a hand knife.
Trimming (cobbing): Any loose, raggy ends of skin are removed by a hand knife.
Hand fleshing: The hide or skin is placed on a beam flesh up, the unwanted flesh, connective tissue and fat is removed by slicing and pushing action with a two handed knife.
Machine fleshing
Splitting: When hides or skins are plump in the limed state it is appropriate to split them into a grain layer and one or more flesh layers.
Blue Crome Splitting: can also be done on wet hides after chrome tannage. They should be well sammed (60 % moisture) for accurate uniform splitting.
Acid Blown Splitting: pickled sheepskins are washed in water to remove salt which then allows the skins to acid swell. After these acid blown skins are split they should be repickled as soon as possible.
Splitting is also done on crust vegetable tanned leather, which may be damped before splitting or dry split.
Splitting causes loss of strength. Sum of the strengths of the two splits will only be about 80 % of that of the original whole.
Lime scudding: done with a blunt curved knife which squeezes and pushes the grain removing the loose protein, hair roots, muscle tissue, pigment and some loose fat all of which are calledscud. Commonly carried out on a machine similar to an unhairing machine.
Rounding of hides: subdivision
