Skiving 2. Types of Skiving and Try to Use Skiving Machine

8 min readAug 26, 2018

Skiving can be divided into two major parts.

1) Entire whole skiving (Spaccare)

2) Partial part skiving (Scarnire)

3) Hand skiving

Entire whole skiving that skive entire leather with even thickness should use appropriate equipment since it skive a large area.

But this equipment is large in size and very expensive, so it is difficult to use in an individual or small workrooms. So people usually ask for the entire skiving in the leather market which is concentrated in the Shinseol-dong.

The reason the entire skiving is necessary is that the thickness of the original leather is not fit with the desired bag.

When making a bag with cowhide, the thickness of 1.2~1.5T is generally skived, but it can be different depending on the use of stiffeners or the part of the bag.

There was an entire skiving machine in the Firenze Leather School, so I could skive whenever I needed and I could do more sophisticated work. But I can’t go out to Shinseol-dong every time in Korea. So I usually collected things to be skived and do at once or just skive with almost uniform thickens.

Maybe people who own their workroom really wants to purchase entire skiving machine. As such, if you have this machine, you can work much more conveniently and sophisticatedly.

But the price is very expensive.

While the entire skiving is to skive entire area, partial skiving is to skive relatively partial area.

For example, the leather needs to be as thin as the area for folding. In this case, you can use partial skiving machine.

Partial skiving machine can be controlled the area and thickness to be skived.

This area and thickness can be different depending on each part and its usage.

1) Folding: Width 1.2cm / thickness 0.5T

2) Leather joint: Width 0.8 cm / thickness 0.8T

3) Piping joint part: Width 0.8 cm / thickness 0.7T

4) Piping (without spigetta): Width 0.7 cm / thickness 0.7T

….

The above examples are some of the figures I have for partial skiving.

In this way, you can find the optimal figures by controlling width and thickness after organizing the figures for each skiving when you skive.

We also need to care about polishing and managing the blade of skiving machine.

Like the cutting knife, if the blade of skiving machine dulls, the skiving is not precise and the width and thickness can be jagged.

Finally, hand skiving is a part of partial skiving, but it doesn’t use a machine. So I will tell you about this in another chapter.

Now, let’s look at how to do partial skiving using the machine.

This is a partial skiving machine I’m using.

It is made by Japanese NIPPY which is popularly used in Korean leather workrooms.

The price was about KRW 2,500,000.

It is made by copying famous German machine called Fortuna. So you can buy a blade of Fortuna and set it on this equipment.

Since it is equipment, you need considerable time and effort just to learn more about setting and management. I will just focus on necessary functions one by one now, and I will explain more whenever necessary.

Let’s take a closer look.

You can see the blade which is very important among various parts. There are also a guide which controls the width of skiving and foot which controls the thickness of skiving.

Once the figure of width you want to skive is determined, you can fix it by controlling the guide accordingly like the above photo.

The principle of skiving machine is that the blade rotates while pushing the leather between them and presses the leather from the top so that the lower surface of the leather is cut. Among them, the photo is determining the width.

And the interval of foot that pushes from top to bottom like the above photo and blade can be the thickness to be skived.

Before skiving, you need to control the thickness after skiving with same leather as a sample. Try to skive thicker than you think and gradually reduce it to prevent the tearing of leather.

This is a blade, the most important part in the machine.

The tip of the front sloping part should be well sharpened.

In addition, you need to adjust the distance between the foot and the blade.

The thinner the leather, the narrower the interval should be set.

I tried to make a sample skiving for folding.

Try to fold like this to make sure that the skiving is done appropriately. If it folds naturally, the skiving is done properly. But if it is difficult to fold, you need to skive more thinly.

There may remain the foot marks depending on the leather.

For soft leather, skiving can’t be done well since it is easy to be rolled out.

In this case, you can try to solve the problem by taping the foot like the above photo.

Tape the side where leather touches like the photo.

Now, I will try to skive for piping.

This leather is piping leather. Here, I will try to skive for the piping without spigetta (plastic padding). Because there is no spigetta, I skive both side of the leather and make the center part thick so that it can take a role of padding cloth.

If you wrap the spigetta with thin leather, it can be exposed by the friction of living parts. So luxury goods or luxury bags usually use piping without spigetta.

But the bad thing is that the shape may be somewhat less obvious than the piping with spigetta.

I will try to skive both side with 0.7cm width and 0.7t thickness. For reference, the entire width of piping leather is 2.2cm and the entire skiving is done with 1.3T.

Set a width as 0.7cm using guide for skiving

You can turn the screw as shown in the photo to adjust the height of foot. The clockwise direction will lower the foot and counterclockwise direction will up the foot upward.