Ever wonder about how that stone washed effect is achieved on blue jeans? By washing with stones, that's how. The fabric is placed into large industrial washing machines together with volcanic rocks. The rocks rub against the surface, abrading some of the cotton yarn. Since the fibers used to make jeans are dyed only on the surface with indigo, the undyed white cotton begins to show through. A clever inventor in the U.S. actually sells "The Authentic Stone" for home production of stone washed jeans. All one has to do is rub a freshly washed pair of jeans with the stone to produce the "authentic effect." Mothers do not appreciate it if this is attempted in the washing machine.
What about acid washing? Actually there is no such thing. The washing is done with porous volcanic rocks which have been treated to absorb bleach. When added to the jean washing machine, they contact the material in a random fashion, destroying the indigo wherever they happen to touch. The actual type of rock used is a proprietary secret. The pockets of all jeans are checked before distribution to ensure that rival manufacturers do not find an errant stone.
Finally, jeans wouldn't be jeans without rivets. In 1850 a German tradesman by the name of Levi Strauss had the idea of making durable pants for gold miners out of the tent material he had imported from the town of Nimes in France, which American originality christened "denim." When the miners complained that the pockets ripped when they stuffed them with gold ore, Levi reinforced them, as well as the crotch, with copper rivets. The latter were eliminated when cowboys found that crouching around a campfire exposed the rivet to the full heat of the flames and caused burns in a rather sensitive area of their anatomy.
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