Studies on The Production of Football Leather from Cow Hide

Football Leather - All You Need to Know

Modern worldwide leather market is now a days very fond of football leather. Finished leather is also an intermediate product. Which serves as a raw material for finished leather is therefore, fashion driven, requiring more responsiveness to the market, whereas crust leather is more a commodity type product. Since 1990-91, Bangladesh have started exporting footwear and other leather goods. Bangladesh currently export leather footwear to Europe and Japan.

Leathers used for footballs are mainly chrome tanned leathers that have not been retanned or only lightly retanned in thickness of 2.5 – 3.0 mm. But generally ‘Football leather’ is not used for footballs  exclusively as it’s name might imply, but it is used for making the outer coverings for the football, the volleyball, the water polo ball, the rugby ball and many other balls of a similar nature.

Characteristic Properties of Football Leather :

1. Football leather must have high degree of resistance to the penetration of water. (great extent of water repellency)
2. It should have high tensile strength.
3. It should have high stitch tear strength.
4. It should be non-stretchy.
5. It should be non-elastic.
6. It should have good abrasive resistance.
7. It should have perfect fastness properties.
8. Its fibre structure should have low angle of weave.
9. The void space of the leather should be reduced filling with hard materials and its capillary action should be minimum.
10. It should have tightness and its elongation must not be more than 4%.
11. It should be thick (i.e. 2.1 mm-2.3 mm)
12. It should be resistant on inert in acid alkaline medium.

Principles of Football Leather Production

The Thick butt portion of cow hides are taken for making football leather. To get various desirable physical properties special care should be taken from soaking to finishing during manufacture.

Proper soaking is done with preservative. Liming is accomplished in such a way that less interfibrillary substances are removed. (i.e. Sharp liming). For high strength properties excessive swelling and splitting of the pelt should be avoided. Delimiting is done just after fleshing and without batting it is pickled.

For high strength and low stretchiness, it is tanned with high percentage of unmasked chrome and properly rechroming is done with chrome syntan to get more fullness. It is neutralized with Sodium (Na) or Potassium (K)-salts of organic acid for non-stretchiness and inertness.

Water-proofing fat liquor is used in fatliquoring with raw oil of high viscosity. After fat liquoring, chrome caping operation will be done with self basifying chrome. It is dyed with full penetrative dye. Then it is finally dried under maximum stretched condition in all direction. In finishing surface of football leather should be coated with water proofing agent in a thin finish film.

As production capacity in finished leather and leather goods is developed in Bangladesh, new jobs will be acquired, and markets will be accessed. In standard quality specification, thickness of football leather is min. 2mm. The Europe, Australian and Indian cow hides are generally thick. So, it is easier to keep the thickness 2mm. But in our country’s cow hide quality is not good for many reasons.

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