Hermes Style Leather & Edges

[kielson]

Hi everyone,

I've just started to getting into leather working and I'm mainly interested in making bags. I've worked with some veg tan and I'm happy with the results, but I find the end product to be a little to stiff and the surface too crass.

I've done a fair bit of research and reading but I cannot seem to find any reliable resources on how Hermes puts their bags together (mainly the Birkin). Does anyone know if it's just a soft leather that has been glued to veg tan, or is it just thick, soft, amazing, expensive leather? I'm also interested in how they apply the inner lining to the leather, if stiffeners are used and it's even possible to burnished a thin soft leather that has been glue to veg tan.

Any help or advice is appreciated, Thanks!

[TwinOaks]

In most cases, you'll find that bags and garments use Chrome tanned leather. It's a different process, and can yield much softer leathers than vegtan. It also does NOT finish the same.

Yes, it can be bonded/glued to vegtan, but it will not burnish like vegtan edges will. That is one of the reasons you'll see most bags sporting some flavor of edge coating.

[kielson]

Ah I see. Thanks for the reply. I'm slowly learning everything I'll need to play around with some Chrome tanned leather soon to get the feel for it.

[makitmama]

I use predominantly high quality lamb. For a purse >$500, I have used calf, and love deer-tanned calfskin. I do not use interfacing except for internal pockets/dividers, but put a small piece inside the folded leather for each snap or rivet.

Because the lamb is so soft, I like to use glazed linen for the lining. I experimented a lot years ago, and found I could not put in good zip tops unless using 2oz lamb.

I did a custom purse, and the customer wanted 'squishy' and 'soft'. I used regular quilt batting between the lamb and lining to give her the squishiness she wanted.

[DavidL]

stiffener is regularly used in the bottom of bags and areas that need strength. Calf skin, flexible plastic, hard plastic (luggage bags) or leather splittings can be used for stiffening . If money wasn't an issue first choice for me would be kangaroo chrome tan/veg tan. Usually the stiffeners are a few mm away from the edges out of sight.

A few bags using thin draping type leather around 2 ounces will use plastic stiffeners pre cut to size in between the outer and inner leather. Its possible for bags using chrome tan (in between stiff and draping) to have no stiffener in certain areas, only one 3 ounce outer and one 3 ounce inner. Its a matter of whether or not you want that part to be stiff (briefcase, bottom of bag, pocket) or you designed it to have a natural slouch. Theres no absolute one way as there are many ways for the end product to look and what texture hard or soft you want that portion to feel (although with different materials plastic vs chrome tan you can create subtle differences). Try the different materials out and you can figure out what will create a stiff

you will need a glazing iron for edges using chrome tan.

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

There are some YouTube videos showing the making of Hermes products.