Hierbij een artikel uit the Guardian over stingrayleer en schoenen:
Why make shoes out of stingray skin?Ian Sample,
The Guardian, Thursday 11 December 2003 12.21 GMT
It's a pig of a material to work with. But shoes made from the stuff should at least be pretty scuff-resistant, reassurance indeed for anyone about to part with £750 for a pair put on sale this week by British shoe designer Oliver Sweeney.
Sweeney, who supplied shoes for England's rugby World Cup winners, teamed up with GQ magazine to produce 100 pairs of stingray shoes, which will be made to measure and dyed one of 15 colours, ranging from a sober tan to a more frivolous neon pink. Stingray skins are a by-product of the food industry in Asia where the fish is a common dish.
Unlike common animal hides, stingray skin is covered with a mosaic of thousands of tiny, bony plates that protect it from predators and skin parasites. Unfortunately for the stingray, however, the virtues of its hide were noted early on and the skin became the fabric of choice for making swanky armoured clothing, not least for Attila the Hun. "If you were slashed by a sword, it would have great difficulty penetrating," says Sweeney. He now hopes his shoes will benefit from a similar level of protection. "It's difficult to imagine that shoes made with it are going to wear out. You'd have to really abuse them."
Geoff Attenburrow, an expert in leather technology at University College Northampton, agrees that the stingray's skin could have advantages over traditional leathers. "Scuffing is definitely a big issue with shoes, and this certainly sounds like it would be resistant to scuffing," he says.
The skin itself gets its strength from masses of intertwined collagen fibres. Leather from animal hides differ in strength depending on how densely packed these fibres are, whether they are aligned or criss-crossed, and how thick the skin is. Kangaroo leather, which is widely used to make football boots, is regarded as one of the strongest leathers available.
The stingray's armour-plated skin might make it a good fabric, but working with it is another matter. "It's a nightmare to work with. It broke all the traditional shoe-making equipment in our factory. It broke the needles, the punches, it broke everything," says Sweeney.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/dec/11/thisweekssciencequestions1
