How tough is leather? This tough...

[DJole]

I have an electronic alarm  key-card I use at work. I decided to tool a nice case for it, with my initials, using scrap leather and some cheap, ugly fluorescent yellow polyester thread (hey, it was cheap, on sale at Tandy!). I put my locker key on it, also. 
I've had it for a couple of years now, riding nicely in my pocket.

This last week, I somehow lost it -- I could not figure out where it went. Not in my house, or car, or at work. Where could it have gone?  I got a new card issued to me in the meantime. 
This morning, after 4 or 5 days or so, a woman rang our doorbell and handed me my card holder, with card! She had found it on the side of the street (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 mile away) in some beauty bark. 
I figure that somehow I had left it on top of my car, and it had managed to stay there for a ways until falling off into the street, where for a few days it was lying in the street, getting run over and run over and so on. So, down below, are pictures. You can see that the leather is in suprisingly good shape, both the tooled side and the smooth leather side! The leather has been bent a bit (look at the D), but there are very few scratches and no tears. The thread has been scuffed a bit  on the keyring end, but still intact.

The rivet holding the keyring loop is scratched and battered. But the smooth leather here seems untouched. I am quite surprised. 

 

The split ring -- it is mangled, hard! I am baffled at just how badly it got bent. The key is battered too -- the plastic cracked on one side, but it still opens my lock just fine. 

Luckily, it hasn't rained in the last two weeks, or things might be different!

Here's a shot of the whole  thing in its glory:

Edited July 9, 2021 by DJole

[AndyL1]

Nice! 

[Klara]

Yep, the leather definitely held up better than the keyring and the plastic on the key. Did it manage to protect the card as well? 

[DJole]

11 hours ago, Klara said:

Yep, the leather definitely held up better than the keyring and the plastic on the key. Did it manage to protect the card as well? 

The card was only slightly bent, nothing else. 

[sbrownn]

The leather pieces had more surface area to disperse the force of being run over and were more much more elastically able to return to their original shape.

Metal and plastic are harder but once their elastic limit has been exceeded they do not return to their original shape.