Stiffener 1. Italian Stiffener

I will ask a question now.
What can be medication if used well and what can be poisonous if used wrong in the leather craft?
My answer is stiffener.
If you understand the physical properties well and use the stiffener appropriately, the leather will be stiff and wrinkled leather can be spread.
On the other hand, if you use improper stiffener for each situation, you can distort the shape of the bag.
But I don’t think you can understand about this right now. You will know if you actually use it and experience the failure.
I just hope you will be able to fail less after reading this article in advance. Then, I will tell you about various stiffeners that are used in the leather crafts, focusing on the Italian stiffeners.
There are many stiffeners, so you may feel a little afraid since its usage is also various.
We will take a look one by one and experience.it.
We will look at the Salpa first.

Here, one more question.
If you need to add stiffener on the leather, what material is the best for the stiffener?
My answer is the leather.
But, there can be many difficulties when using the leather as stiffener.
First of all, the price is very expensive that it is difficult to match with unit price.
The weight can also be heavy.
It is also difficult to choose the thickness of stiffener widely.
So I guess that is why Salpa is produced.
Salpa is a compressed one made with wasted leather in a powder form.
Still, its ingredients are natural; the sense of difference with leather is relatively less than other stiffeners.
And there are various thicknesses and it is easy to use as paper, so it is good to cut as much as you need.
Above all, it is less uncomfortable to apply edge coat to the cross section even in the fabricated condition like leather.
Edge coat can’t be applied well for other stiffener which is not like leather.
We call Italian Salpa as LB in Korea.
It is written as Leather board or Leather Base.
Salpa is the most used stiffener for me and I like it.
It is possible to use by adding straps and it makes to cut more smoothly by reducing the leather’s slipping.
In addition to advantage of cutting, strap can reduce the stretch when it should support the weight of the bag after production.
And it is strong against the friction by reinforcing this Salpa in the connection part of metal decoration.
You may have seen that the leather of connection part with the D-ring metal was stretched because it didn’t use the stiffener.
In this case, it will be much stronger and it can hold the metal decoration for a long time if you use Salpa.
Reinforced tape is used a lot.
But Salpa is more useful to hold things.
Salpa gives not only reinforcement but also an embossing effect.
If you cut Salpa little smaller than the size of the leather and use it, it may give original reinforcement and thickness effect.
Personally, the reason I like this Salpa is that I use it a lot when I need to cut thick parts with free curve.
When we need to cut the part which is small, has many inflection points and has thick entire thickness like a handle patch, D-ring patch, the end of a strap or the curved part, we may cut the left and right differently or cut the lower leather more than upper leather due to its thickness.
To solve this, I usually cut by dividing each part.
I call this as Mao’s way.
I made this name because teacher Mao taught me about this. Perhaps there are other terms.
It is to cut the Salpa with desired shape first and then cut the leather based on the Salpa and to cut based on the previous shape after bonding the bottom leather (called as free size cutting).
Because of the much thinner thickness than the bundle cutting, inclination is less and over cutting can be prevented. Even though the section difference is not as small as the bundle cutting, it can be reduced to some extent by adjusting section difference of both leathers based on the Salpa.
It requires more works, but the quality is very satisfied.
Next is Texton.

t is a paper-like stiffener.
It is called as Texon, Bon Tex or Web Tex with its manufacturer’s name in Korea. In the field, people pronounce it as Texion. If you want to buy this stiffener in Shinseol-dong leather market, you’d better use this pronunciation.
For example, you can use this stiffener when you need to reinforce the base or give more strength on the side and the back.
Note that the texton is easily folded when you fold it, so you have to use it to reinforce the plane as much as possible.
If you use this stiffener in the main body of reversible bag, you will be annoyed.
You’d better to add stiffener only to the plane after dividing plane and three-dimensional parts by using it in the smallest part as possible due to the nature of texton.
In case of cover, texton is used in the front, but you’d better to cut three-dimensionally on the part rolled in.
Even if you use the texton on the front to give strength on the main body, you need to make sure that there will be no problem to roll in the bottom surface after cutting three-dimensionally.
This texton stiffener is used a lot for the structure bag.
I use texton 30 for lining and texton 60 for upper to make folding easy to hold the shape of the bag. You can see that I did three-dimension cutting in the part rolled.
In fact, people use this texton for almost every bag except the one with in-stitching in Firenze Leather School. They also used double or triple reinforcement for the part that is required to hold the shape more tightly.
It may be good to keep the shape of bag right after the production, but sometimes the shape is distorted due to the difference in physical properties with leather and its own nature to be folded.
I brought the bag I made in the class in a carrier, but its shape was distorted. It can be the example for the above explanation.
My friends, who were in the same class, told me about the bag.
“Hey, my bags are all sloppy”
“Huh, me too. Why?”
I think it was because of the stiffener.
If I used good leather and minimized the use of stiffener, it would have been less damaging even in a slightly or wrinkled condition.
There are various thicknesses in Salpa and Texton.
In case of Salpa, there are Numero Due, Numero Quattro and Numero Sei.
In case of Texton, there are Texton 30 (trenta), Texton 60 (Sessanta) and Texton 90 (Novanta).
Each number refers to the thickness, which is 0.2mm, 0.4mm, 0.6mm, 0.3mm, 0.6mm and 0.9mm.
Each thickness can be used according to the usage.
Salpa Nemero Due is used for the base to make folding in the wallet pocket, and Nemero Quattro and Sei is used to make folding base of the bag.
Texton 30 is mainly used for the base of lining and 60 and 90 is used for the base of upper.
There are grains on Salpa and Texton.
There are some directions that are gentry folded or relatively stiffly folded.
In particular, the thicker one will have more obvious grains than the thinner one, you need to be careful to use.
Next one is Micro Fiber.

This material has fewer wrinkles, so it can be used to reinforce the reversible bag.
And the embossing effect is also good.
If you want to give soft embossing that is not too hard, you can use this Micro Fiber instead of Salpa.
It is also called as VXP, a name of manufacturer. Since it is relatively expensive, people often use SL, synthetic leather to have a similar effect.
If you skive the leather thinly due to the weight of the bag, you can use this stiffener to reinforce the strength.
This has also various thicknesses, so you can use it selectively.
In fact, this stiffener was not used in Firenze Leather School.
Instead of this, the school used the following one.
It is Fodera, which has a nature of synthetic leather.

Fodera originally means the lining.
It seems to be called as Fodera because it is used a lot in lining.
Firenze Leather School provided this synthetic leather for practicing because it is too expensive to use the leather even for the lining.
I could skive with hand and fold, so it was find for practical use.
And it was used as stiffener in the reversible bag a lot.
It was used as much as Salpa and Texton.
Unfortunately, I can’t find the same thing in Korea.
I hope someone who is in related business can import this stiffener.
The good thing about this material is that it can be used to make prototype at the design stage of the bag as well as reinforcement.
It is moderately soft and has strength.
It is very good material for verifying the design of the bag in advance since you can feel the same softness with the leather and the strength as if it was added by stiffener.
Next is TNT.

It is often called as felt.
One side is glued; the colors are black and white.
There is no difference in colors. The white one is less likely to be colored than the black one, so it is good to use the base that supports the leather when attaching the leather of Bottega Veneta style (Intrecciato).
Note that when you use this stiffener, you should apply bond in the part to be attached. This is because the existing bonding can be fall off easily if you don’t apply bond.
Next is sponge.

It is called as Gomma Piuma in Italy. Sponge effect is often used to increase the volume.
This stiffener is mainly used for industrial products.
It is used to increase the volume of leather artificially, so it is quite different from the leather in the use feeling than the natural volume in some way.
So, I don’t actually prefer this.
If you touch the bag made with this sponge, you will know what I mean.

This stiffener is called Gomma Schiuma. It is a stiffener with glued one side.
I think Firenze Leather School seems to have a learning objective of trying to use as many of these various stiffeners as possible so that we can know the difference and apply it in the new situation. I think that’s why they overused the stiffener
I’m trying to use the stiffener partially and limitedly in areas where it is difficult to express only with the leather by selecting the good leather rather than using the above stiffeners a lot.
Then, are lessons I learned in Italy not necessary?
No. It is very different to use by knowing and not knowing.
Next is Seta.

It is a fabric that is used for wallet pocket.
The reason for using this fabric is that it is thinner and lighter in weight than using leather for all parts.
For reference, Korean fabric is better in overall quality and the price is cheaper when comparing Italian fabric with Korean one. Of course, high-end fabrics of Italy are very good quality and very expensive.
As you see in the photo, Seta which was provided for class increased a lot and its tissues are loosened. Korean one is much better.
Next is Salta Plem.

I don’t actually prefer this kind of stiffener, so I just used it once.
I don’t really like it.

I brought other stiffeners from Firenze Leather School. But I don’t know its name.
Stiffeners are different from the leather in physical properties. So it will have different denaturation and deformation depending on various factors such as light, heat and moisture.
Such different denaturation and deformation can make the shape of bag disharmonious.
The best stiffener will be the leather.
I will continue in 3. Production (Basics).
