Dr Clive Dalton
Wool, Hides and Skins
Cockle: Defect in a lamb or sheep pelt seen as nodules that have developed over the pelt surface. Can be prevented by appropriate dipping.
Dressing skin: Woolly lamb skin, which is suitable for processing into leather after all wool has been removed.
Fellmongery: Factory or department in abattoir or freezing works where wool is removed from lamb and sheep skins.
Grain: Surface layer of a pelt, hide or leather containing and showing wool or hair follicles.
Green skin: Undried skin from a farm or slaughter facility, which does not have long-term keeping quality.
Hide: Skin from a mature cattle beast or calf. Also used in deer.
Liming: Alkali chemical treatment of a hide or pelt to make it softer and pliable
Paint: Chemical mixture to penetrate the skin to loosen wool.
Painting: Applying paint by spray or other means to the flesh side of a sheep skin to remove the wool.
Pelt: A lamb or sheepskin after wool has been removed.
Pickled pelt: Lamb or sheep pelt preserved for export with brine and sulphuric acid.
Pinhole: Defect in a lamb or sheep pelt seen as small holes in the pelt grain caused by wool fibres growing in groups, and most prevalent in fine wool breeds.
Rawhide: See green skin.
Ribby pelts: Pelts of wrinkly sheep breeds such as Merinos, which greatly restricts their value.
Skin: Derived from sheep, goat, deer, opossum or rabbit (not cattle).
Slink: Skin from young dead lamb or fawn in utero or just newborn.
Skins from these dead lambs (slinks) will be processed for high quality gloves.
Slipemaster: Machine used to recover wool from pelt trimmings in a Fellmongery.
Slipe wool: Wool recovered by a wool puller, after chemically loosened with sodium, sulphide and hydrated lime mixture.
Sweating: Method of dewoolling skins which depends on induced bacterial degradation to loosen the wool. Used mainly in France.
Wet blue: Hide or skin tanned with chromium salts and kept in a wet state, which also make it a blue-green colour.
Wool pull: The estimated weight of wool able to be removed from a skin.
Wool puller: Person or machine who removes the wool from a lamb or sheep skin after it has been chemically loosened.