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The humble chamois leather is an essential tool for any motorist, this unique cloth (sometimes sold as a mitten or pad of sorts) is used for everything from cleaning and waxing to demisting your windscreen on a cold morning to wiping the bugs off your license plate after a long drive. Genuine chamois leather has a number of unique properties that make it so versatile, it has almost no abrasive properties yet is incredibly absorbent. This is because it is a natural material full of pores that can stretch and expand in order to soak up liquids, and even though there have been a number of synthetic alternatives produced in recent years nothing has proved to be quite as successful as a genuine chamois leather.
Due to the unique properties of the chamois leather it can even be used to filter fuel in an emergency; if it is soaked with clean petrol it will not allow any water to pass through its surface fibres making it ideal for filtering petrol that has been kept in containers of a somewhat dubious nature. This has made the chamois leather an essential of not just the motorists tool kit but has cemented its reputation in aviation and boating circles as well, and many mechanics around the world are never seen without a chamois leather close to hand.
Historically chamois leather was used for a number of purposes including constructing gloves, drying and polishing shoes and also for producing bags and clothing. There is some confusion as to what exactly constitutes a chamois leather; according to the 1991 British Standard BS 6715 a genuine chamois leather must be made from the skin of the mountain antelope (also known as the Chamois and the origin of the leather's name) or from sheepskin or lampskin that has been tanned using a very specific process. In the US a chamois leather is usually only made from sheep or lambskin, antelope skin versions are rare.
Sadly there are many chamois leather fraudsters on the market who attempt to dupe innocent purchases with cheaper goat or pig skin versions. There are even synthetic materials that replicate a chamois leather like feel, however many users feel that these do not function as well as those made from natural materials. Deerskin chamois leather is also commonly available, deerskin versions are often expensive but of a suitably high quality and arguably worth every penny. Artists sometimes use chamois leather as a blending tool when working in charcoal or pastels, these are often offcuts from other industries.
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