EP46: Q&A Chromepak vs. CXL, Horween Pinnacle, Coffee Tanning, Why Pit Tan?
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
- Nick Horween and Phil Kalas answer your most pressing leather questions.
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Thank you guys for the information on Pinnacle! I did order my jacket with Pinnacle Horsehide in black from Aero. About a 14 week lead time so won't get it until SEP/OCT. But i had never heard of Pinnacle and wasn't sure if i should go with Pinnacle or Tumbled CXL Horse Hide. I was told Pinnacle had a softer feel and doesn't require a long break-in period like CXL HH would. So based on my age, i decided i should go the comfort and softness route!
Love this podcast and getting to hear about Pinnacle directly from Nick is better than any write up summary i was able to find. Thank you both!
I'm a scientist with a chemistry degree. I can give some pointers on the question between overdyinge chrome vs veg retanned leathers.
All kinds of reactions can happen but at different speeds. Dyes like indigo are most likely undergoing a substitution or addition reaction. Substitution reactions are best with leaving groups that can hold a negative charge. Chromium can be made into a good leaving group as CrO3. I'm guessing Veg retan leathers won't have a good leaving group like CrO3 and instead require very complex organic reactions.
Thank you guys for the solid info in the Chromepak! I have a pair of Nicks boots in the Sage Chromepak that ive been wearing for the last 3 months or so and I love them. The feel and smell really differentiate themselves from other leathers i own. 👍
Pinnacle being used for a bag is really interesting, since many of us are most familiar with boots, shoes, wallets, and belts. If you were going to do a weekender bag or duffle, so you want it to have some drape-what leathers would you steer towards and why?
I’d love to just hear your brainstorming and what qualities make you think of each leather- since we are so use to those discussions with other products.
Always a treat, fellas
Again with the awesome topics 🥰
Been wanting to learn more about chromepak.. I get so psyched when I see a new podcast posted from you guys : )
Timestamps:
0:00 intro
0:40 chromepak vs cxl
3:55 pinnacle
9:14 properties of different tree barks
10:20 why pigment is used for black leather
11:47 dyeing leather
15:26 pit tanning vs drum tanning
18:07 removing and replacing fats in leather
21:06 what is crust cxl, defining “crust”
24:29 what is waxed flesh/huntsman
25:16 why choose crust cxl over classic cxl
27:31 defining what veg tan means/can coffee tan leather
29:16 what fats can be used in retanning
32:12 Seasonality of leather and leather goods
45:00 hide buying
50:57 favorites (BLTs/Popeye’s)
Awesome content!
Leather insoles and heel counters. Why are they always veg tanned and not chrome tanned or combination tanned like CXL?
Is all CXL created equal except for its thickness? Like is the CXL Viberg and Alden use, PNW brands use, and less expensive brands like Wolverine use the same?
If you guys have your chemists on, can you ask them what are the different properties that different veg tanning processes bring? And what does that mean chemically?
Nick really looks like Fabio if Fabio was a tanner rather than a model.
I’ve had that vegetable conversation before with people. It can almost be any part of the plant, but usually served as a more savory food, rather than sweet like a fruit? It’s colloquial?
Can we use bacon fat for retanning 😂? How will it smell and act?
In Germany, there is a tanning process called wet-green that only uses olive leaves to tan the leather. How is that different than tanning with tree barks? What are the trade offs?
So Steer hide plus the cordovan tanning process equals essex
What does cordovan plus the chromexl tanning process equal? Or maybe even the cypress process.
It seems like you get a higher yield of cordovan if you dry pasted it.
Can you tell us some differences between the waterproof Chromexcel leather Allen Edmonds uses? I’ve heard a regional person from AE refer to this leather as ‘Cavalier’ by Horween.
do you think you could share some information about bison leather? I have an old pair of Vibergs in black pit tanned bison and I can’t really find much info about the leather.
Why is Navy CXL not navy?
You guys are the Michael Jordan’s of leather podcasts. Absolutely dunking on the Mailman with how hard that delivered ua-cam.com/video/awffXgr1Yic/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared
Thanks so much for reading and answering all the questions!
Quoddy still makes Ring Boots as an MTO, picked up a pair earlier this year. I had the expectation that they’d be a little like cxl and tried to wear them sockless, but wound up creating some blood patina bc of the tougher texture. On the one hand they feel like you could throw them at a tank and knock the treads off the tank; on the other hand, they’re breaking in just fine with socks.
I can add some context to the questions about overdye and ferrous acetate. They come from what Unsung House has done using homemade walnut dye on engineer boots: ua-cam.com/video/Z1yDQiBXNaA/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared Grant has mentioned on Stitchdown that he was shooting for a deep even black but wound up with more of a textured brown tone. He mentioned to me trying to use vinegar black, which is common in antiquing gun holsters, and produces black tones by binding iron to tannins (but didn’t work well as an overdye with a finished leather intended for boots). To relate it back to a different question, this is probably more of an application where crust leather would be desired.
Through this conversation I wound up reading a manual about dyeing textiles with natural/plant based dyes and I was intrigued by a line in the manual that said that all textiles require tannins to be dyed, except for leather which already has tannins in it. There was also a line about how chrome could be used as a mordant to deepen colors in textiles, but is no longer used in hobby form due to the risk of creating chrome 6. In the antiquing forums they mentioned only being able to use veg tan leathers, and I wasn’t sure why chrome/veg retan leather wouldn’t also work.
To bring this back to boots, it’s interesting to see how natural indigo has been used to dye boots as in this oak street boot: ua-cam.com/video/D7gJomhHn5Y/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared I also wound up finding a more stable indigo option through a Japanese tanner/maker called Y’2 Leather (available through standard and strange) which patinas like an interesting cross between denim and leather. They’ve got some cool photos on their website under “About Aging.”
Left out the how the leap to indigo happened. There was a page in the manual about creating near black colors with natural pigments. Indigo plus walnut can create that tone, which also in a way relates to why reverse black shell cordovan is green and tan. Gotta hit that RGB colorway for human eyes to see black.
It’s been a few days and I’ve got more questions and some of them are probably more reasonable than others. At some point I can copy these forward into future episodes to make them easier to find when it’s time for another q&a episode
1)First off all, Heavy Native Steer should be the first track on the self titled debut album of Bovine Stepchild. I think if you’re doing an episode on hide buying, it’d be interesting to break down the term Heavy Native Steer. One question that I wasn’t able to find an answer to, what makes Heavy Texas Steer hides lower quality than HNS?
2)Have you guys heard of Blackened whiskey? Aged with a process “dubbed BLACK NOISE™, this sonic-enhancement process produces low frequency sound waves that cause the whiskey to reverberate at a fast rate, interacting with the oak staves of the barrel, unlocking its full flavor potential.” Each whiskey is aged with a different Metallica song. Can Phil’s band be used to expedite the pit tanning process? I’m picturing a Mad Max: Fury Road situation where Phil’s strapped to the pits. ua-cam.com/video/Z4_SJfCGQwM/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared
3)Is the fat stripped from hides a usable byproduct? Are any of the byproducts of tanning usable? The splits?
4)What are the differences between cypress and glazed latigo? Episode 6 mentioned the quality of modern hides don’t support there creation of large volumes of glazed latigo as was done in the past for Bass sandals
5)From Shuyler Mowe on the Nick’s boots UA-cam podcast: what is the difference between natural and moc?
Is it that natural is a condition and not a color and moc is a color and not a condition?
Stridewise mentioned whale oil as a historical component of CXL, now I’m on a whale oil deep dive. In the Heart of the Sea, Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick has been one of the better books I’ve read in the last few years.
Whale oil was banned in 1972, used widely in automotive transmission fluid and margarine before then, some sources describe components that are similar in jojoba and fish oils; when did Horween transition out of using whale oil and to what scale was it used in the past? Apparently the shift caused some major problems way later in history than you’d think:
“The trouble involved the cooling unit for the automatic transmission oil, which is placed in the car's radiator. The fittings between the cooling unit and the radiator gave no trouble when whale oil was the fluid, but the substitute allowed the fittings to corrode. That permitted the oil to get into the radiator's cooling system and the radiator's antifreeze to get into the transmission.
This damages both the radiator and the transmission, requiring a major overhaul, which normally would cost more than $400. But under an informal arrangement, G.M. says it has been paying for the work no matter what mileage was on the cars.
General Motors estimates that its repair bill from the transmission problem will be $2.2million. The company says it will pay for repairs, estimated at $400 a car.” NYT 1975
“In North America alone, 55 million pounds a year sperm whale oil were being consumed. Little did anyone know that the car-driving public was about to learn a painful lesson - their automobiles’ transmissions were in big trouble without sperm whale oil.
Thanks to the critical role that sperm whale oil played in making automatic transmission fluids and gear oils, car transmissions routinely lasted for the life of vehicle. Once alternative ingredients had to be found, transmissions began failing at unheard-of rates. Before 1972, less than 1 million transmissions failed each year; without sperm whale oil, transmission failures exploded to more than 8 million by 1975.” University of Washington Magazine, 2019
I left an approximate scale of how many cattle were used to make marine field shoe during WWII in the comments under episode 15. I wonder if we could also get a rough idea of how many whales were needed to produce that much leather.
Thanks again for taking the time to read and answer questions (I know I’ve kind of left a wall of text here), and thanks for continuing to do the world’s best leather podcast
Here!!