Leather hide coverage

[sofadoc]

Occasionally, we're all a little unsure about how much useable coverage we can get out of a leather hide. While I had a minute, I thought I'd lay one out and measure it.
This pic is a 48.5 sq. ft. hide folded in half:
 

The measuring tape is at 100". The yardstick on the far left is 24"  (48" unfolded). The other yardsticks range from 33" to 40" (66" to 80" unfolded).

48.5 sq. ft. is roughly equal to 2 3/4 yards of regular upholstery fabric.

[MinUph]

18 sq.' per yard. Your figures are very close to the given yardage figure. 2.69444444 for a 48.5 sq' hide.

[sofadoc]

18 sq.' per yard. Your figures are very close to the given yardage figure. 2.69444444 for a 48.5 sq' hide.

Yeah, I knew that I was "rounding up" a little. But I've always considered the 18:1 ratio to be a tad conservative anyway.

[baileyuph]

I don't recall which but one of my suppliers said do it at 2.5 yd per hide of something close to that hide size.  So, I usually go with about 2.25 because I can run into arifacts in the hide that is detectable.  Scars from barb wire fencing, for example.

Leather work can get expensive needless to say.

Doyle

[bobslost]

18 sq. feet per yard is also the formula I use it seems to work . How ever with some of the exotic hides you have to be careful. I had some elephant hides that you would think would have been huge. But the way they where skinned because of weight ( so they could be packed out )
It was almost impossible to cover the furniture the customer wanted.

[Darren Henry]

While I had a minute, I thought I'd lay one out and measure it.
This pic is a 48.5 sq. ft. hide folded in half:

Question for you Dennis; is that 48.5 calculated @ 12"X12"/sq. ft. ? Or Is that the silver ink marking on the hide from the tannery? I never converted to yards back in my former vocation (see page 1/item four of Gene's post---shoemaker hooks up with tattoo artist) but I've always been sold 10"X10" as a "square" in leather, at least up here.

[MinUph]

While I had a minute, I thought I'd lay one out and measure it.
This pic is a 48.5 sq. ft. hide folded in half:

Question for you Dennis; is that 48.5 calculated @ 12"X12"/sq. ft. ? Or Is that the silver ink marking on the hide from the tannery? I never converted to yards back in my former vocation (see page 1/item four of Gene's post---shoemaker hooks up with tattoo artist) but I've always been sold 10"X10" as a "square" in leather, at least up here.

You guys up there always measured funny LOL. :P

[Darren Henry]

 :-\  maybe....But I can go alot further on a real Imperial gallon of gas than your little US one. Just funnin, Bro.

[sofadoc]

Technically, a 54" X 36" yard of upholstery is 13.5 sq. ft.. If you figured a sq. ft. @ 10", it would be 19.4 sq. ft.

I'm not sure how the leather distributers come up with the 18:1 ratio.

I'm only saying that the leather hide in my pic is 48.5 sq. ft. because that is what it was sold to me as. I have no idea how they measure them. I could measure that hide a 100 times, and come up with a different answer every time. ???

[MinUph]

YEa sofa I always wondered how they figure 45.5 47, or 50 sq'. They must do a measurement around the circumference or something. All those little bumps and legs and such ya never know. I guess we have to take their word for it and I'm sure some are sold larger than what they really are. By some anyway. This is all just a way to estimate anyway.

  Darren, Is a square foot a measurement you guys really use? Why not square meter or sq mm or something metric. I hope you also know I was just pulling you leg before.

[Darren Henry]

we're actually only semi-metric. We'll drive 100km an hour for the 60 miles to the next major town in -30* C cold with a 20 MPH wind to get an 8 foot 2X4. ;D

I was just pulling you leg before

I know.I was just joking around too.

[gene]

This may be a repeat, but I'm being told that that is becoming the norm with me. The good thing about not remembering if I said something before is that when I tell the same thing over and over again I get to enjoy it each time as if it was the first time I'm telling it.

What I like about Canada is that because kilometers are shorter than miles, you get places faster.

Canada has all these signs about getting points for speeding. I told a friend who went wilderness canoeing with me in Northern Ontario, that if I got pulled over for speeding I was going to ask the policeman, or police woman, how many points do I need to get a toaster. His biggest worry was that I would ask that question if he got pulled over for speeding. LOL


I believe the good ol' US of A has never gone metric because much of our public school systems are about maintenance, and not education. It would be such a fiasco that the politicians pushing for it would look bad.

gene

[gene]

Thanks for the info sofaD.

I do not do a lot of leather. For those of you who do, how well does this conversion work? Is it better to think in terms of a certain number of hides for each chair or sofa?

Cutting the panels out of a hide would leave a lot of scrap that could not be used for other panels on a sofa or chair, I would think. Or are the hides generally big enough to where you can use most of the leather?

gene

[MinUph]

Thanks for the info sofaD.

I do not do a lot of leather. For those of you who do, how well does this conversion work? Is it better to think in terms of a certain number of hides for each chair or sofa?

Cutting the panels out of a hide would leave a lot of scrap that could not be used for other panels on a sofa or chair, I would think. Or are the hides generally big enough to where you can use most of the leather?

gene

I find the 18 sq' per yard as a useful way to estimate hides. I generally round up to the next hide when selling and ordering. There are times when you can use the small pieces on places that don't matter like zippers, parts that don't get stressed but the important pieces need to be taken from the best parts of a hide.

[Steve at Silverstone Fabrics]

How do they measure a hide so accurately? .........Tanneries and leather wholesale houses have a "light" table that they run the hides through.

The table measures the amount of light that is "blocked out" by the hide and it uses that information to compute how big the hide is. That is how all of the odd shapes are accounted for. Steve