171–180 of 202 posts
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Why don't they just breed cows that are more spherical, to maximize the volume-to-surface-area ratio?
Or more wrinkly. Increased surface area compared to a sphere. It works on brain surface area. There's probably a tradeoff in the quality of the hide as a result of this however.
I'd be interested to know how much of this has to do with the dilution of the meaning of 'leather' in terms of consumer goods. The market is flooded with garbage products, which are produced by slicing a thin veneer of leather and gluing it to a plastic backing, which is then sold as "bonded leather." It's gotten so bad that full-grain leather products are exceedingly rare. Since 90% of "leather" products are such aw…
My new buckle is a case the loose end is threaded through, which has guide slots in the sides facing your nose and toes (respectively) for a pin that is self-locking by pinching the belt between it and the inside of the side of the case facing away from you. This requires two hands to reduce load on the buckle, followed by pinching the pin where it pokes it's rounded ends through the slots to pull it out of the self-locking end of the slot.
I preferred the old one, but how to find a good belt like that? Also, it tends to look tattered/unprofessional with the friction-damaged fabric belt and the non-shiny (not obviously rusty) steel wire rectangles.
If anyone knows a source for such at sane pricing, I'd appreciate sharing of knowledge.
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I had a really awesome leather belt that I got when I was 15. I stopped wearing it when I was 30 because my weight finally out outgrew the belt. Still have it. It's no worse today than it was when I got it as a teen. I go through about a belt a year now. Because I always seem to end up with this crap you describe. Even if I try to avoid it. Guess I need to do a better job looking... Or just lose some weight so I can…
Try searching leather goods on Amazon or Ebay. 95% of the results aren't - they're leathercloth, fake leather, bonded leather, PVC, but use "leather" as a headline keyword anyway. Amazon don't care despite it being borderline fraudulent. Then you see a quality brand you remember from 40 years ago who once sold proper thick hide belts. Comes for a similar premium price that has you thinking it's the real thing still.…
Something like a site with "leather teardowns" on products?
Alternatively, what would be a good non-invasive non-destructive method to detect its actual leathernness? Something like Atomic Dielectric Resonance scanning? It may sound absurd to construct an ADR scanner to buy a leather item on a sporadic basis, but the device could be rented (for a miniscule price, with a deposit in escrow to ensure return) say at a bio-shop... Or somehow build it into a phone, using its radio spectrum?
In World of Warcraft, there isn't any use for hides either. You can only cure them, but then there's nothing to do with the cured hides. The vendor price is static and set by Blizzard, though, so the prices don't change. I hope this comment has been useful to someone.
I would be sympathetic to the idea that in-game economies should try to be "real" except that Ultima Online tried that and it failed spectacularly (think: tragedy of the commons) and so they had to abandon it.
I never liked leather as a material: heavy, easily scratched, etc. when I was a kid it was used in everything from backpacks to camera cases. Leather seats in cars get hot in ways cloth ones do not. Etc. Good riddance! Well, I have leather hiking boots. Heavy but highly functional. It always seemed crazy to me that leather goods, while functionally inferior in most cases, are considered the ”luxury” versions. Some so…
I never understood the fascination with leather car seats. Climbing into an oven to sit on a burner isn't my definition of premium or luxury by a long shot.
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The virtual economy of UO was killed by the time the beta test ended. We're talking about the NPC shopkeepers here, not the player owned vendors. The NPCs were supposed to follow things like supply/demand as well as having preferences as to what they wanted. Players got mad as they wanted to just be able to dump any old crap (typically bucketloads of skullcaps) to any old NPC. The NPC shopkeepers also kept hours, wou…
Ah yes, I had forgotten about that stuff. A bunch of it was before my time and I only knew about it from other players' stories. Thank you for posting it! Even with so much of that removed, UO always had the feeling of a living breathing world more than almost any other game.
I never played it however, I was too hung up on the notion that anything short of a full on sandbox which allowed all the behaviors people were fleeing would be good enough for me. Took me a while to realize that the only people showing any interest in the types of games I was looking for were the people I hated.
> “There are hides with no value. We’re throwing a natural product in the garbage.”
This makes me very sad. The least we could do with the burgeoning meat market is use all of the parts of the animal to the best of our ability. The fact that people still prefer fake synthetic leather when real leather is so cheap and readily available it's being thrown away is unfortunate.
Unfortunately these lower leather prices certainly don't seem to have affected the price of premium, handmade leather goods. Leather is good in so many things: wallets, belts, shoes, bags, jackets... It's naturally water-resistant and lasts for decades , yet it seems like all the big-box stores and manufactures have abandoned real full-grain leather for synthetics or even cheaper leather alternatives (PU, "top grain,…
I suspect (but cannot prove) that in the case of premium, handmade leather goods, the majority of the cost (probably a really big majority) is the time of the people hand-making it, which is unaffected by the drop of the cost in the leather.
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To be fair, Ultima Online’s economy was tanked by the innovation of bard/tamers and the Trammel ruleset introduced in Renaissance. Massively increasing the supply by having it possible for players to trivialise the ransacking of dungeons without risk of losing their haul to PKers. Classic inflationary spiral.
The virtual economy of UO was killed by the time the beta test ended. We're talking about the NPC shopkeepers here, not the player owned vendors. The NPCs were supposed to follow things like supply/demand as well as having preferences as to what they wanted. Players got mad as they wanted to just be able to dump any old crap (typically bucketloads of skullcaps) to any old NPC. The NPC shopkeepers also kept hours, wou…
Expecting a reasonable supply/demand for something that gets spawned without limit, and gets harvested as a side-effect of something people want to do anyway, is like expecting a supply/demand based trade in candy wrappers or banana peels; The obvious economic value for most NPC drops is zero, and artificial price fixing is required to make it something else.
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Simple Leather Belts' prices are too high too! I've been in the market for new belts for a year now, so the glut of hides is good news. Time to stock up for another century! I've had very good full grain leather belts in the past. Now that I know the market situation I'm going to search for a big (cheap) piece of full-grain cowhide and cut my own damn belts out of it. Belts aren't hi-tech. It isn't as if we're talkin…
There's more that goes into production than material costs. Seems like a deal compared to crap that will fall into disrepair after a year or two
"How to Make a $90 Belt for Only $23":
https://www.primermagazine.com/2012/learn/how-to-make-a-90-b...
discusses where to buy leather and tools (that will last the rest of your life) and how to make the belt. Also...
"How to make a $100 belt on the cheap": https://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/comments/k6uro/ho...
where you'll find tips on finishing the leather too.