paulr

Looking for an ipad mini (a bit overated if you ask me, but that's another story) leather case.
Got all the way down to buying it, its leather PU. It's about time leather meant leather. ie straight off a cows back, nothing added or taken away.

Leather look
Leatherette
Leather PU

Where's the real leather society when you need it.

dpb

Why on earth would you want leather case for what is a cheap bit of chinese tat anyway??


Gel case for my playbook, well happy with it

boomer

Yup,

i bought a "leather belt" from Deb'nams last year, but it turned out to be "composite leather". Turned out to be as strong as wet chipboard in tension - i.e. sh1te.

Luckily they replaced it with a proper "intact skin" belt (after a lot of faffing around) and that one does maintain its integrity.

Whatever happened to quality and "doing a proper job" in the first place?

mb

The Dogs B******s

Leather Fettish I see

fitzscoob

Honest answers is that most of the designer brands are more interested in profit margin so are willing to compromise on material used. How else are retailers going to maintain 4 times multiples and more?

Bicast, the stuff you see on lots of dining chairs is a split leather crust with a pu top coating which to explain better is a **** ugly girl with 1" of makeup on.

We also suffer with raw material shortage, the Chinese are buying vast sums from the kill so other countries struggle with crust.

hux309

Here you go paul.


Cheap and genuine leather, got one for my htc one and it's lovely, all leather throughout.

Even has that proper smell, if that's your kind of thing.

paulr

PU leather.

hux309

Crap, odd as the case i have is genuine leather hmm....

Well this is, point is doesn't take much looking.

paulr

PU again.

I'm going by the people who rated it as a 1 star.

fitzscoob

Synthetic top grade PU leather.

Its laughable that people can get away with phrases like that.

Top grade and PU should not be in the same sentence.

paulr

Great video helping to explain.

fitzscoob

Not wanting to torpedo your video but she doesn't really offer anything as solid proof.

The lady mentions that real leather doesn't crease on a hinge when making box work is rubbish. Over the years I've made lots of box work for Smythson, and we've seen all sorts. Saying that creasing comes from only paper or plastic is pretty much rubbish.

The item she held is very small, to get the leather to form to shapes of this type there is cause to split and pare the leather to make it more pliable. When leather is split we can reduce the overall thickness to an accurate 0.1 of a mm. For arguments sake, cow hide arrives to me at 1.1 - 1.2mm thick. For a menu cover or folder this is fine for the body, but a box would need the leather reduce to 0.8mm or even thinner depending on the process required.

When leather becomes this thin, there is always possibility of it creasing. At this thickness some leathers will tear just like paper.

On poor quality leather, you can see looseness or fleshiness. This will look like lots of small creases. What is happening here is that the leather is separating from itself. The top layer and the fibers making up the crust have movement between themselves and are separating. Imagine picking a cotton wool ball apart (not quite this extreme, but you get the picture), in this instance nothing can be done to stabilise the material.

The second piece of advice was to feel the inside of her made jacket. Whilst looking and feeling the underneath should give the clearest indication of the natural material, it's a bit difficult when there is a layer of fabric between you and your proof. You also don't want to be taking a knife to your nice new coat.

You can also purchase bicast (PU leather) also given a plethora of other names by imaginative people trying to polish a turd. Bicast is a man made top layer, which is then laminated to the top surface of a cheap crust, normally a split, but in theory could be any type of crust. Essentially any leather crust that is not good enough quality to be turned into grade 1, 2 or 3's will be sorted to be used for this type of application as it hides a multitude of sins. My point here being, that the top surface can look leather (ish) but is not, however the reverse will be leather.

The burn test is pretty good. Leather doesn't burn, in extreme cases it'll smolder. Many tanneries have to treat their leathers to crib 5 or for airline seat leathers we're looking at crib 7 specification which means it's treated with more chemicals to reduce further the possibility of it setting fire.

I'm not being deliberately difficult (I promise!), it's just not as straight forward as the lady would have you believe.

paulr

No problem. What advice would you give for anyone who buys leather products.

dpb

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