Currying is the general name given to the various operations of dressing leather after the tanning is completed, by which the requisite smoothness, lustre, colour, and suppleness, are imparted. The processes of the Currier are various. The first is styled “dipping” the leather. It consists in moistening with water, and beating upon a trellis-work of wooden spars with a _mallet_ or _mace_. After this beating, by which the stiffness of the hide or skin is destroyed, it is laid over an inclined board, and scraped and cleaned, and, wherever it is too thick, pared or shaved down on the flesh side by the careful application of various two-handled knives, and then thrown again into water, and well scoured by rubbing the grain or hair side with pumice-stone, or with a piece of slatey grit, by which means the _bloom_, a whitish matter which is found upon the surface in tanning, is removed. [Illustration: Rule. Pincers. File. Pliers.] The leather is then rubbed with the _pommel_, a rectangular piece of hard wood, about twelve inches long by five broad, grooved on the under surface, and fastened to the hand. The Currier uses several of these instruments, with grooves of various degrees of fineness, and also, for some purposes, pommels of cork, which are not grooved at all. The object of this rubbing is to give grain and pliancy to the leather. The leather is then scraped with tools applied nearly perpendicular to its surface, and worked forcibly with both hands, to reduce such parts as may yet be left too thick, to a uniform substance. After this it is dressed with the _round knife_, a singular instrument which pares off the coarser fleshy parts of the skin. In addition to these operations, the Currier uses occasionally polishers of smooth wood or glass, for rubbing the surface of the leather; and when the leather is intended for the use of the shoemaker, he applies to it some kind of greasy composition called _dubbing_ or _stuffing_. Leather is occasionally dressed “black on the grain,” or having the grain side instead of the flesh coloured. The currying operations in such a case are similar to those above described, but the finishing processes are rather different. The leather is rubbed with a grit-stone, to remove any wrinkles and smooth down the coarse grain. The grain is finally raised by repeatedly rubbing over the surface, in different directions, with the pommel or graining board.