Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:442:arsch-leders (Jeremy Bornstein)
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This is the Quicksilver page for mining and mining gear
Stephensonia
Once you know that "arsch-leders" translates as "leather ass" (or something like that, anyway) then it really is pretty self-explanatory. More precisely it means "ass-leather". This is nothing much more than a piece of tough leather apron (worn backwards) to protect one's bottom while working in mines.
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually (but not always) from an ore body, vein, or (coal) seam. Materials commonly recovered by mining include bauxite, coal, copper, diamonds, iron, gold, lead, manganese, magnesium, nickel, phosphate, platinum, salt, silver, tin, titanium, uranium, and zinc. Other highly useful materials that are mined include clay, sand, cinder, gravel, granite, and limestone. Any material that cannot be grown from agricultural processes must be mined. Mining in a wider sense can also include extraction of petroleum and natural gas.
History The oldest known mine in the archaeological record is the "Lion Cave" in Swaziland. At this site, which has a radiocarbon age of 43,000 years, paleolithic humans mined for the iron-containing mineral hematite, which they presumably ground to produce the red pigment ochre.
Sites of a similar age where Neandertals may have mined flint for weapons and tools have been found in Hungary.
Another early mining operation was the turquoise mine operated by the ancient Egyptians at Wady Maghareh on the Sinai Peninsula. Turquoise was also mined in pre-Columbian America in the Cerillos Mining District in New Mexico, where a mass of rock 200 feet (60 m) in depth and 300 feet (90 m) in width was removed with stone tools; the mine dump covers 20 acres (81,000 m²).
Arsch-leder
Arsch-leder
Apparently this was also used in mines that had chutes down to the actual mine faces, thus enabling miners to go down literally in seconds. In Germany there is at least one historical mine open to tourists where you can try yourself (2003 link, site in German: http://www.erlebnisbergwerk.com/sites/abenteuer.shtml ).
There is also a rite of initiation tradition of emptying your glass of Schnaps, and then "jumping over the arschleder" ("Ledersprung"), right into your new profession. This tradition has been transferred onto other settings too, apparently the rite of passage into some austrian student brotherhood borrows from this tradition as well.
Nowadays other people find uses for this handy garment, like high-power kite flyers. (2003 link, site in German, picture of an arschleder here: http://www.drachenwerkstatt.de/adat/12615.php ) Of course you can find Arschleder on Ebay as well.
There is, by the way, no such word as "Arschleders". The German plural is the same as the singular. One Arschleder, two Arschleder, a ton of Arschleder.