Two bridle leather briefcase panels for lining a leather case, one lined in calf suede and one left unlined.
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Lining a Case: Suede or Bridle

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

A lining is a second skin glued to the first. Every step is a chance for the two to disagree.

Lining a leather case looks like the easy part of the build, since the outside is done and all that’s left is to cover the inside with something soft, and it’s the part where a good case can turn into a wrinkled one in about ten seconds of bad glue. The choice comes first. Suede, which is soft and quiet against papers and costs you thickness and care. Or bridle left as it is, unlined, its own back finished smooth. After the choice, the case has to survive the glue, the fold, the edge and a few thousand days of use, and something can go wrong at every one of those.

Video: Gluing my Chestnut Bridle Leather Briefcase Lining, from Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube.

That’s a video from my channel of gluing a lining into a chestnut bridle briefcase. Here’s the job broken down, with what goes wrong at each step.

Step one: choosing suede or no lining at all

The first mistake is lining a case that didn’t need it.

Hands pressing a suede lining onto a bridle leather flap held curved while the glue sets.

Start with what each option is. My suede lining page describes Italian calf suede, finished by buffing the flesh side of the hide into a velvety nap, and it says plainly that I avoid lower grades like pig suede. Sheepskin is there on request. The natural leather lining page describes the other road: an English bridle case kept unlined, the traditional style, with the back of the hide pasted and matted down into what the page calls a “very durable and easy to clean natural bridle leather lining.”

So “bridle lining” here mostly means no second layer. The bridle is the lining.

How I weigh them: suede is more luxurious, and it needs care around liquid and ink. Bridle on the inside is a little more durable and wipes clean. A leather-on-leather lining is a third option, and it raises the cost because it takes another hide, which is why I’ve often offered suede only.

The thing that goes wrong here is thickness. My Leather Choices page says Hermann Oak comes “very thick, around 8 to 12oz and with a suede lining it gets even thicker,” and that’s why it usually recommends keeping the natural lining. Maze Leather’s guide to lining leather items makes the same point from the other end: a second layer can roughly double the thickness of a piece, turning a thin wallet panel into a much heavier one.

My opinion: double a thick bridle panel and the case stops folding where you drew the fold. If the outside is already heavy, the lining has to earn its place, not just its softness.

Step two: picking the suede

Same word, different animals, different stretch.

Suede on a supplier’s shelf comes from more than one animal, and the difference shows up later. Weaver Leather Supply sells a pig suede lining hide at 1 to 2 ounces, chrome tanned, around 9.5 square feet, and the listing says it has “Just the right amount of nap.” Tandy’s page on its vegetable-tanned leather puts linings in the 2 to 3 ounce class.

On a leatherworker.net thread asking pig or cow suede for a liner, JLSleather says cow is generally firmer and stretches less than similarly treated pig, calls that a rule with exceptions, and adds that pig has a visibly different grain he doesn’t like. chuck123wapati says his pig suede runs about a millimeter and soft. JLSleather also prefers goat as a thin liner, for stretch resistance. In a separate thread on linings, LatigoAmigo lines bags with horse front because “the material is thin yet sturdy.”

My opinion: what goes wrong here is stretch. A lining that gives more than the outside can bag and ripple once the case is loaded, and one that gives less will fight the fold.

Pig has its defenders. AzShooter, who likes the feel of it, says “I’ve never found it to be too thick for a liner.” Others in that thread skip leather entirely. DrmCa suggests a fabric liner, which is lighter, doesn’t stiffen the bag, and is what most mass-produced bags use. That last point is the argument against it, as far as I’m concerned, but it’s an honest one.

My page says calf, and my bias runs that way. But I’ll say this for the forum. Nobody in those threads claims there’s one right animal, and they’re right not to.

Step three: cutting and gluing it in

Glue the whole face, cut it big, and glue it bent.

Macro of a lined briefcase edge with bridle leather, suede lining, saddle stitches and edge paint.

This is where most linings fail, and they fail in three ways.

The first is alignment. Maze’s method is to trace the panel onto the back of the lining, cut the lining larger than the line, coat both pieces with contact cement past the line, let it tack, press them together, roll out the air, weight it for a few minutes, then trim. In the thread on lining leather with suede, MADMAX22 cuts his linings oversize for the same reason, because he has trouble lining the pieces up before the glue catches. Cut big and trim after.

The second is wrinkles. On a thread about attaching a pigskin lining in a bag, Beaverslayer warns that gluing only the edges will likely wrinkle the lining as it folds, and says to glue the whole liner, then sew. Northmount goes further and says to glue the piece curled “about halfway to the position it will be when fully folded.” He also warns that the flap won’t go back fully flat afterward, because the lining would have to stretch to get there. Test it on scrap first.

The third is the leather itself. Maze warns that high-oil leather makes glued liners very hard to attach, because the moisture keeps the adhesive from holding. My Leather Choices page describes English bridle as traditionally very waxy, and the UK hides as carrying a greasy top coat from the tannery. Scuff a test patch on an offcut of the same hide, glue a scrap of the suede to it, let it cure, and try to peel it before you trust a whole panel.

Step four: holding it at the edge

Glue keeps the lining still. The edge keeps it in.

Once the lining is down, the edge has to be finished, and the edge of a lined panel is two different materials meeting. Tandy’s edge-finishing tutorial says to make sure the line between the face and the liner is visible and straight, so the layers read clearly. Maze, on a lined piece, trims the lining so it leaves “a nice equal edge to burnish later.”

On my own work, two rules hold. Lined cases get stitched edges, because the stitch is what holds the lining in for years. Unlined cases don’t need that. And on lined or suede-lined cases I don’t burnish. I use a latex-based edge paint, because it also glues the layers together while it covers them, which no slicker can do.

What goes wrong here is order. Dave, in the suede thread, finishes edges last, after the face is finished and sealed, and Dwight’s order runs edging, sewing, then final finish. My opinion: finish the edge after the stitching and you only finish it once.

Not everyone glues. Hardrada, in the linings thread, points out that a liner doesn’t have to be glued at all, and that many bags hold a fabric liner by stitching and leave it floating. That’s a real choice for a soft bag. My opinion: in a structured case with a bridle shell, the layers should move as one.

Step five: living with the lining

Suede keeps what you spill. Bridle lets you wipe it off.

An open bridle leather briefcase with an unlined natural interior holding papers and a pen.

The work isn’t finished when the case leaves the bench. It’s finished when somebody has carried it for years.

JLSleather, in the pig-or-cow thread, warns that suede is difficult to clean and traps debris and fuzz, so you may not want it where you can’t easily brush it out. My opinion: a briefcase is exactly that place, because the bottom seam of a gusset is where pencil shavings and grit end up. That’s why I say suede needs care around liquid and ink. Bridle wipes clean, and my natural lining page makes that its whole case.

The site’s guide on how to clean the inside of a leather briefcase covers what to do once it’s already happened.

My opinion: buy suede for the way it feels and the quiet it gives your papers, and accept that it will age with a record of everything you carried. Buy unlined bridle if you’d rather the inside of the case wear the same way the outside does.

Where my own advice runs out

I make the case for suede. Then I stopped building it.

Everything above reads like I’m selling suede linings. I’m not, anymore. The Maker page says it in my own words: “I no longer build briefcases with the center brass lock or the leather lining.” Both take more time than I can give.

That’s the honest end of this. A lining is a whole second build inside the first one: another material to buy, another glue-up that has to go right the first time, another edge treatment, another set of stitches that hold more than leather. On a heavy bridle case, the Leather Choices page was already pointing customers toward the natural lining for thickness. Time finished the argument.

So if you’re a maker deciding, do the math with your hands, not the price list. If you’re a buyer deciding, ask the maker which one he’d carry. The answer might be the one he doesn’t have to glue.

Barge All Purpose Cement, Quart: A quart of solvent-based contact cement. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Mnuizu 60 mm Leather Press Edge Roller: A 60 mm roller for pressing glued leather flat. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

John James Saddlers Harness Blunt Point Needles: A set of blunt-point harness needles, five sizes with five needles of each. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Mandala Crafts 150D 0.8mm Black Flat Waxed Thread: A flat waxed polyester thread, 0.8 mm, in black, for hand sewing leather. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Fiebing’s Edge Kote, 4 oz: A 4 oz edge coating for finishing leather edges. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

3Pcs Wooden Sandpaper Block Set: A three-piece wooden sanding block set with bevel and wedge shapes. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. A commission may be earned if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you.

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