SOFTNESS - AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON OF MANUAL ASSESSMENT AGAINST INSTRUMENTAL METHODS

An international ''round robin'' trial has been carried out to investi gate the ability of a number of instruments to objectively measure lea ther softness. Also investigated was the inter-laboratory variation of the instruments tested.Results show that as the softness range of a p ack of leathers narrows, the variation of softness rankings by assesso rs increases. The average of the rankings of nine assessors was used t o assess the ability of each instrument to measure leather softness. T he instrument which performed the best in this trial was the BLC's ST3 00 softness Tester. This instrument is also non-destructive in its app lication and an order of magnitude quicker in its operation (as no sam ple preparation is required).