Today in the Lotuff studio a batch of our new Leather Lockbox Bags are being put through the splitter. Splitting is an essential step for maintaining the structure of some of our bags, and also makes certain leather pieces more manageable for assembly and stitching. The Lockbox is fully leather-lined, and so there are twice as many pieces to split as some other designs, making it a time-consuming process.
Splitting is, essentially, slicing a piece of leather lengthwise to either even out or change its thickness. Doing so requires a great deal of attention: even one-tenth of an inch’s variation can mean the difference between a perfectly balanced bag and one that tends to fall to the side or feel less uniform in places.
Once split, these Lockbox pieces will be matched to others of identical weight and then checked with a gauge. The matches will then be laminated together, which helps to avoid potential uniformity issues while lending the leather a wonderful plywood-like quality. Through this process, the bag becomes stronger but feels lighter.
A great deal of consistency is required when splitting leather, the process is time-consuming, and the result is really almost invisible in the final product—but the Lockbox would never have the look and feel it does if we were to skip this step. Quality is everything, and we’re more than happy to do anything that allows us to achieve it.
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