Re: Monday Answer
The industry I was looking for was the tanning industry. The offshoot was the shoe/boot maker. The forest depletion was owing to the massive amount of stripping of bark for the third stage of tanning to provide color for the leather.
The tools were the bark spud to strip bark, head knife or scudder to scrape hair, a stick (yes, it was called a stick) for beating, lifting and rolling up skins, a mallet for pounding down the wet skins to make the skin smoother, and clams were curved wooden jaw clamps that were held between the knees so that skins could be sewn. As to urine and dung, that was for hired women and children to collect in piss pots on street corners and barns etc. and it was used along with crushed seashells to be placed in shallow pits to soften the skin and eat away the hair. Tanning was one of the first industries actually legislated out of the city limits because, well, you know. If you thought grape stompers had it bad, think about the poor souls whose job it was to keep the pits filled and then knead the skins with hands and feet in what amounted to a toilet. One source mentions that burns and other skin problems often accompanied these people. Far away Eskimos did it differently with their teeth. According to �Tools and Trades of America�s Past� the 1840 census had 8229 tanyards in the U.S. and as far back as 1739 there were six in Philadelphia alone.
From the web under �Tanning�-- the cleaned up version.
After slaughtering, the hides were washed in the river or stream to remove blood, loose flesh and other soiling, then kept soaking in water until ready to process further. Cattle, swine, sheep and goats provided most of the hide commonly worked.
The most important part of the tanning process involved vats containing a variety of equally noxious solutions. These large containers (on the average about 12 feet square) were sunk slightly, with an earthen wall to help retain the water supplied by diverting part of a stream or river.
The first vat contained a lime solution (obtained from limestone or shells), into which the hides were placed and left to soak, hair side down. Chemical action caused some of the hair to fall off. The skins were then removed and the bleached fat and hair-lime residue was scraped off, the latter later sold for plastering. The hides, scraped free of the bulk of the hair, were returned to the liming vats, which by now contained large quantities of decaying organic matter full of bacteria which aided the process of hair and connective tissue removal. In a procedure which took about two months, the skins were alternately soaked for a few days and removed from the vats, folded and left out for a few days more. By the end of this process, the remaining hair could be easily removed without harming the hide.
The skins then entered a similar soaking and resting period, involving vats of lime in weak solution. This process took over six months.
In the next phase of leather production, the hides were combined with oak, beech or willow bark, which would provide the tannic acid necessary in preserving and coloring the hide. Other acidic additives to this dressing included sour milk, cider pressings and ferment of rye, recipes varying according to the materials at hand, the weather and the ultimate finish desired. Bark was spread in the bottom of the tanning pit, then hides and bark alternately stacked until the pit is full. A foot of tanbark covered the pit, and the whole well trampled down and kept moistened for three months.
So the next time you buy a antique Tanning tool remember where its been.