NEW SUBSTITUTE FOR LEATHER.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2507, 18 January 1877, Page 3

NEW SUBSTITUTE FOR LEATHER.

The last issue of Scribner's Monthly contains an interesting sketch of a new {Product designed as a substitute for eather. This product is named by the writer as " vegetable leather;" but why the"name " leather " should be applied to it, considering the definition of the word . is " the skin of an animal dressed and prepared for use," is a question, as the new invention "is composed entirely of vegetable matter. Passing the question of title, however, we present, as a matter of interest, an account of the material and process used in manufacturing the gc-called vegetable leather. The materials are cotton, or cotton waste or dust, cocoanut fibre and other textile by products and fucus crispus, a marine moss abundant on the.New; England coast. The waste is' first elided into sheets of wadding of uniform thickness; and then laid on polished zinc plates, kept at high temperature, and treated with a decoction of the fopus till thprpqgh.lv saturated- \ The sheets quickly become dry, and in a few minutes may be lifted from the plates and passed jZp between hot polished rolls adjusted to give liny desired thickness to the finished leather. These rolla .are under heavy pressure and completely felt the materials into strong, tenacious and flexible sheets. The sheets are next coated with boiled linseed 'oil and dried in the open air, or in a dry-room. When dry, they are coated with vegetable wax and run through hot fluted rolls, and are finished hj a fina} passage between polished rolls. The jpather may then be bronzed, silvered, varnished or otherwise treated^ like ordinary leather. To produce a white leather, clean cotton is used and the whitest pieces pf d,riedmoas, and bleaphed linseed pi^~ American paper.