How to identify genuine leather watch straps

    Many friends enjoy wearing watches with genuine leather straps, but they also have questions. How to identify genuine leather straps is one of the most common queries. Below, Watch Home will explain how to identify them.

     There is no need to explain what genuine leather is; it is, of course, leather made from animal hides. However, genuine leather is also graded into many levels.

     Top-grain leather: This can be divided into full-grain leather, corrected-grain leather, split leather, and the finest calfskin. This is why you often see merchants online marketing products as "top-grain calfskin". Furthermore, it can be categorised into first-grade, second-grade, and third-grade top-grain leather.

    Split leather: split leather is essentially half-real and half-fake leather, as it is made by shredding leftover scraps of cowhide, bonding them back together with polyethylene material, and then finishing them by spraying chemical agents or applying a PVC or PU film. It can be further subdivided into first, second, and third grades.

    Faux leather: everyone knows this is fake leather, and I will not go into much detail about how it is made.

    Of course, you can find all this knowledge by searching online, but what I want to talk about is how to distinguish top-grain leather from split leather;

    Top-grain leather: the online description is "when pressed down with your hand, wrinkles appear, and natural leather wrinkles remain after wearing. It will not crack after wearing." This is top-grain leather, but I have a more specific identification method. Because when you buy a leather item, you are unlikely to press it hard to see if it is real; since genuine leather is not cheap, whether it will recover after being pressed remains an unknown. My method is:

    First: smell it. Genuine leather has a unique leather scent, a smell that might require a bit of experience to detect. However, if it is genuine leather, a single sniff will reveal a distinctive aroma, making you suddenly realise that this is real leather.

    Second: look at it. Because leather crafted from cowhide has many tiny pores on its surface due to the hair follicles of the hide, and processing finds it difficult to remove these pores unless something is layered over the leather. These pores are very small and require careful attention to see.

    Third: of course, this is the least desirable method, which is burning it with fire. This method is strongly discouraged because it damages the leather. Genuine leather does not form a hard lump when burned, whereas faux leather will form a hard lump.