A NEW METHOD OF TANNING LEATHER, WHEREBY A GREAT SAVING WILL BE OBTAINED BOTH IN EXPENCE AND TIME, AND WHEREBY A BETTER ARTICLE IS PRODUCED
Year: 1802

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, we, JOHN
CANT, late of the Town of Brechin, Tanner, and JOHN MILLAR, of the Town
of Montrose, Tanner and Leather Dealer, both in the County of Angus, North
Britain, send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Third did, by
His Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, bearing date at Westminster, the Thirty-first day of
May, in the forty-second year of His reign, give and grant unto us, the said
John Cant and John Millar, His especial licence that we, the said John Cant
and John Millar, during the term of years therein mentioned, should and law-
fully might use, exercise, and vend, within England, Wales, and the Town
of Berwick-upon-Tweed, our Invention of "A NEW METHOD OF TANNING
LEATHER, WHEREBY A GREAT SAVING WILL BE OBTAINED BOTH IN EXPENCE AND
TIME, AND WHEREBY A BETTER ARTICLE IS PRODUCED;" in which said Letters'
Patent there is contained a proviso obliging us, the said John Cant and
John Millar, or one of us, by an instrument in writing under our hands and
seals, or under the hand and seal of one of us, to cause a particular descrip-
tion of the nature of our said Invention, and in what manner the same is to
be performed, to be inrolled in His Majesty's High Court of Chancery within
four calendar months after the date of the said recited "Letters Patent, as in
.

page_text: and by the same (relation. being thereunto had), may more fully and at large
appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, we, the said
John Cant and John Millar, do hereby declare that our said Invention of a
new method of tanning leather is described in the manner following:-
That our method of preparing hides and skins by liming, hairing, fleshing,
and baiting is the same as that in use by the most experienced tanners (that is
to say), all leather that is to be dressed or curried we use the operation of
what tanners call baiting, for this reason, that the leather when curried should
carry a sufficient quantity of oil, and dry a good colour; but the hides which
we put forward for crop, instead of baiting them (as done by many), we work
them out among fresh water, and put them immediately to the tanning process,
for this reason that it preserves both the substance and quality, and turns out
in tanned leather an article of more weight and solidity than if baited. Those
hides intended for butts and backs we raise as usual, but prefer acids made of
rye rather than vitriol. That our method of tanning, as invented by us, after
preparing as above, is, that we erect a boiler of copper, or any other metal that
does not stain the tan or liquor, in which we put a quantity of bark, ground suf-
ficiently small so as to fill the vessel about half full, then fill it up with water
or liquors that has been already used, and the strength of tan mostly exhausted,
to within about six inches of the top; then make it to boil by a brisk fire, which, if
the boiler is properly placed for that purpose, may be done in an hour, and let it
boil from two to three hours, by which time the tanning principle is completely
extracted from the bark or other substances made use of, after which we let it
run off by a cock at the bottom of the boiler into the pitts or handlers, where
it stands till it is compleatly cold. After all the liquor is run off from the
boiler, we fill it immediately with spent liquor or water, and then drag out the
old tan or spent bark, &c., and put it into a lake, and run water or exhausted
liquor upon it as soon as possible, from which we supply the boiler until we
have every particle of substance from the bark that may be remaining. Then
we put in the hides or skins in said liquors-thus-prepared,-and-handle-them-
frequently by taking them out and putting them in again, particularly the first
day or too, as the liquor is too powerful for them to remain long at a time in
the first stages of the process, then we remove the different lots of goods to
fresh liquors from time to time as the old is weakened, until they are com-
pleatly tanned. By this method we collect such a quantity of the tanning
principle into a small compass from bark and other substances, and consume
far less bark or quantity of other tanning substances than is done by any other
process whatever hitherto practised, besides a very great saving of labour and

page_text: wages.
We proceed as follows with the different species of leather with hides
and skins for dressing or currying after being baited. We wash them in clean
water, unless we have a stock of weak liquors to put them in first; then we
put them into a liquor that has been already used, and bring them forward to
stronger and stronger until tanned; and when we wish to produce leather with
a whiter colour or bloom, we put a small quantity of the dust or smallest of
the bark amongst the liquors. By this method we tan hides that have been
shaved in the baits in fourteen to twenty days, and skins in eight to twelve
days, according to their substance, and produce them better tanned than by
the old or usual process, that takes in general nine months to the one and six
months to the other. Hides for crop, after prepared as before mentioned, and
washed through clean water, we put them into our strongest liquors, prepared
from water only, and the harder the better, and bandle them up and down
five or six times the first day, and the second day put them to a new liquor
and handle them three or four times, and so on changing them in different
liquors, according to the strength thereof and quantity of hides together; by so
doing, and by properly attending to them, they are tanned, although very heavy
hides, in five or six weeks instead of ten or twelve months, the usual period
necessary by the old process. Hides for butts and backs, after raised as before
mentioned, we prepare liquor with hard water, and then suspend them among
liquors so prepared upon rods or ropes placed across the mouth of the pitt, as
near the top as the liquor may cover the hides, and at such distances as may
not touch each other, and lift or raise them out among the liquors two or three
times the first day, and once or twice the second, and then put them to a new
liquor and as often as we find the liquors weakened, and the shorter time they are
exposed to the air the better, as it injures the substance or thickness forced by
the acids. After being so managed for a month, when we wish them to have a
whiter colour or bloom, we lap them away among liquor, as before prepared,
with a layer of dry bark twixt each, which gives them the bloom wanted. Where
hard water cannot be got, lap the hides among water as usual. with layers of
bark twixt each, which, if small ground, will be exhausted in three weeks;
then to be kept away among strong liquor as prepared by us, and a layer of
dry bark. This takes four weeks, and then another lap in same manner,
which takes five to six weeks, when they are sufficiently tanned, unless the
hides are very weighty, and it may be judged necessary to give them another,
but we prefer the first method. as more expeditious; but either is sufficiently
short compared with the old process, which requires as many months as
we do weeks.
A very great advantage is derived by our method of extracting the tanning

page_text: principle from bark, &c., by boiling, as business to any extent may be con-
ducted or carried on upon about one tenth part of the capital required on
the old plan; hence a great national as well as individual advantage,
besides a very considerable saving by substitutes for oak bark, which could
not be done by any other method. We have tried a quantity of oak chips,
We have
which produced a strong tanning principle, as also oak sawdust.
likewise tried the common heath or heather, and have actually leather with
cach of these separately by themselves. The bark of most kind of trees that
produce hard wood has a tanning principle in them, and by our method can
be easily extracted and ascertained. But above all, we recommend the young
growths or shoots from the roots of oak trees, and of such superfluous twigs or
branches that can be lopt off, so as not to injure trees, of which a great
quantity can be got annually in the Kingdom; these, when cut in the proper
season, may be chopped in such lengths as is usual with bark, and when
ground and boiled all together, will produce a stronger tanning liquor than
very old bark from the trunks of trees that have a thick strong crust or
rhind upon them, and which cannot be got off from the bark. . These, and
the different substitutes, as before mentioned that can be made use of by our
operation, we presume will tend greatly to lessen the value or price of bark,
which is the most expensive article in the manufacture of leather. Farther,
in order to ascertain whether bark liquor as prepared by us would have a
more powerfull effect when fermented, we have also made trial of it in that
way, and find that it answers much the same purpose with our boiled liquors;
we have also gone so far as try it by distillation, but do not find that it improves
our process.
In witness whereof, we, the said John Cant and John Millar, have here-
unto set our hands and seals, this Twenty-second day of September,
in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and two.
-Sealed-and-delivered-in-the-presence-of-
JOHN MILLAR. (L.S.) 3
CHA THOMSON.
WILLIAM MEARNS.
Charles Thomson, of Montrose, in the County of Forfar, North Britain,
Writer, maketh oath and saith, that John Cant, late of the Town of Brechin,
Tanner, and John Millar, of the Town of Montrose, Tanner and Leather
Dealer, both in the County of Angus alias Forfar, North Britain, the persons
Charles Thomson, of Montrose, in the County of Forfar, North Britain,
Writer, maketh oath and saith, that John Cant, late of the Town of Brechin,
Tanner, and John Millar, of the Town of Montrose, Tanner and Leather
Dealer, both in the County of Angus alias Forfar, North Britain, the persons

page_text: in the annexed Deed Poll or Instrument named and described, did sign, seal,
and, as their act and deed, in due form of law deliver the said annexed Deed
Poll or Instrument in the presence of this Deponent and of William Mearns,
Shoemaker, in Montrose aforesaid, the other subscribing witness thereto; and
saith, that the several names of John Cant and John Millar, set and
subscribed opposite the respective seals affixed thereto as the parties executing
the same, and the names Cha' Thomson and William Mearns, thereto also
set and subscribed as witnesses attesting the due execution thereof by the said
John Cant and John Millar, are of the respective proper handswriting of the
said John Cant and John Millar, William Mearns, and this Deponent,
AND BE IT REMEMBERED, that upon the oath of Charles Thomson, the
Instrument aforesaid was inrolled word for word, as the same is above written,
and also the Instrument aforesaid was stamped according to the tenor of the
several Statutes made in the sixth year of the reign of the late King and
Queen William and Mary of England, and so forth, and in the seventeenth,
twenty-third, and thirty-seventh years of the reign of His present Majesty
King George the Third.
Inrolled the Twenty-seventh day of September, in the year of our Lord
One thousand eight hundred and two.