LEATHER-CLOTH, or AmEntcax LEATHER-CLOTH, is a common name for coated or enameled textile fabrieS intended to possesi some of the good qualities of leather with out being so costly. As far back as 1849 a material under this name was invented in America; and many specimens of it were placed in the great exhibition of 1851. In 1855 a factory for making it was established at West Ham, in Essex, and the operations are still continued there on a large scale. Linseed oil is heated in large coppers to a certain high temperature, then removed to cool; then mixed with other ingredients, two Of which are turpentine and lampblack. This composition is used as a kind of varnish to be applied to the surface of unbleached cotton. The cotton, woven to various widths and lengths, is calendered to make it smooth, and then passed over a roller; the cont. position is applied to it, and a peculiar kind of knife scrapes the layer to an equable thickness and a smooth surface. After being dried in a heated oven, the cloth is passed between rollers covered with pumice-dust, to rub the composition smooth. These pro cesses are repeated four or five times. The cloth is next painted three or four times with is kind of enamel paint. Some kinds are grained like morocco leather, by being passed between rollers peculiarly grooved on the surface; others receive a pattern in relief by passing between embossing rollers.
Leather-cloth-matrufactmed bythis or some similar process is now largely made in.
England. Besides the one at West Ham. there is an extenglve factory at Lancaster, and the manufacture has also been tried at Glasgow. The best American made stuff is, how ever, still preferred by some consumers. Both English and American makes are much used for covering the cheaper articles of furniture, instead of leather or hair-cloth, and for this purpose the better qualities last well These dearer kinds do not exceed one eighth of the price of morocco leather, and are also much cheaper than hair-cloth or sheep's-skin. Like floor-cloth, or any other kind of fabric coated with oil-paint, Ameri can leather-cloth wears best in apartments not subject to extremes of beat and cold.
Several varieties of enameled or painted calico, more or less resembling the original American leather cloth, have at different times been made on a considerable scale, but none have been found so serviceable as the ordinary kind, so that they have speedily gone out of use. There is a cheap kind of enameled cloth, more highly glazed than what is usually made for furniture, much used for covering trunks, making small bags, and the like.
Those kinds of imitation leather which consist essentially of calico or other woven fabric coated with a layer of india-rubber, previously dissolved by some solvent, such as naphtha, and mixed with other materials to give it body, are numerous, and pass under different names; but no real line of distinction can be drawn between them and the almost endless varieties of textile fabrics made waterproof by a thin layer of india-rub ber. Few of these retain very long the properties they have when newly made. The vulcanized rubber eventually rots, or at least undergoes some change by which it loses its elasticity, and then it cracks, tears, or peels off.
Leather-cloth made on Seager's patent is in fact leather, not cloth. It consists of leather parings and shavings, reduced to a pulpy mass, and molded to any useful or ornamental forms. Le Jeune's leather substitute concists of a cement or mastic of caout chouc or of gutta-percha on cloth, felt, or leather, pressed by rollers, and then pressed upon a layer of leather. By a peculiar splitting machine, a sheet is produced with au extremely thin layer of leather upon it. Spill's vegetable leather is made chiefly of caout chotic and naphtha, the sheets being thickened to any degree by successive backings of canvas. The material is tough, resists damp, and takes on a polish. Szerelerny's leather cloth is made by the application of oily pigments to cloth.