Chamois Wash Leather: Frized Pelts Fulled With Fish Oil Eight or Nine Times (Morfit, 1852)

"Oiled leather is commonly known as chamois, or wash-leather ... from its property of bearing wetting and washing."

Choose the finest goat, sheep, lamb or deer skins (or thin split sides). Bring them to pelt as for kid leather: wash, lime, fleece, beam and bran. Then friz them: rub with a pumice stone, or work under the round edge of a blunt knife, to remove the grain, even the thickness and soften the skin.

Wring the skins and beat them in the fulling trough until nearly dry. Spread each on the table and sprinkle the grain side with cod or other fish oil, fold them in bundles of four, and beat again 2 to 4 hours. Open and air them briefly, grease again, and full again. Repeat eight or nine times until thoroughly imbued, with no greasy look. 3 to 5 gallons of oil serve a gross of skins. (By hand: beat them in a tub with a heavy wooden mallet, our method.)

Hang the skins on hooks from wooden hangers in a warm drying room (his is about 6 ft high and 12 ft square, heated by steam-pipes or a stove). A slight fermentation sets the oil into the fibre.

Handle the skins for an hour in slightly warm potash lye of 2 deg Baume, which turns the excess oil to soap. Wring them at the peg, dry, finish on the stretcher and the stake (horse), and smooth with rollers. For a buff colour dip them in an oak-bark infusion (a dye here, not a tan).

From Campbell Morfit, **The Arts of Tanning, Currying, and Leather-Dressing** (1852), "Oiled Leather" (checked on the archive.org scan artsoftanningcur00morf, pp. 433-436). He refers back to kid leather for the pelt stage. Hand fulling, the tools and the diagram are ours.