Leather is used for the manufacturing of leather products with lot of variety. According to the usage of the product , the different leather articles should posses different physical and chemical properties for strength, durability, comfort, look feel etc. therefore to get a the rough idea idea about the extent to which a leather article will perform its duty satisfactorily, several test method have been developed recently.
The testing of finished leather can be broadly classified as
(A) Visual or spot assessment tests
These test are carried out by the leather manufacturers and customers at the shop floor. They asses the quality of the leather by pulling, stretching, rolling , folding the leather with there hands. the other body organ like eyes, nose, ears are also used for leather quality assessment.
(B ) Laboratory test
Testing the performance of leather in the laboratory is the upper and the widely acceptable method of actual leather quality assessment of leather. These test are carried out very systematically with standard procedure for evaluating the different properties of leather . These can be classified as
- Physical testing of leather
- Chemical testing of leather.
There were time when the properties of the finish leather was asses by the leather manufacturer on the basis of only chemical test carried out in the analytical laboratories. but leather consumer or purchaser were not at all interested in such analytical results which could help a tanner to control his process in the tannery, but was a not a satisfactory method to forecast about the future performance of the leather, therefore the physical testing which gives result on the properties like strength, durability, fastness, gloss absorption , flexibility after which actually assess the future performance of leather is gaining importance now a days.