Tanning a hide

TicTacDoc

Anyone any tips on solutions or cures they're used for tanning hides? After fleshing the hide do you pack in salt and leave for a few days. then what do you do?

Reading a lot of conflicting info on the interweb

juice1304

You can flesh it before or after salting the main thing is to Wack a load of salt on it the finer the better as it will penetrate the hide better and quicker. You need to leave it until the salt gets damp and then change it for some fresh dry stuff, I just put the damp salt in a box and let it dry while the other is working etc.. and just switch them around. You need to keep doing this until it is completely dry it will go hard like a big sheet of cardboard. Then you can start to work on it with the chemicals etc....
I have used this company's kit and they come out very well, it is quite a lot of work to make them soft but worth while.
http://www.snowdoniasupplies.co.uk/

TicTacDoc

excellent. I just bought cp84 softening agent and the cpo6 tanning kit. As for salt I have a couple 25kg bags of fine salt. how many days did you find it took before you needed it to treat it with the tanning agent after the first salting?

juice1304

Well i put about an inch of salt over the whole hide hair side down obviously and salt on the fleshy bit, It depends really about a week or so of salting some hides seem to dry quicker best thing is not to rush it though as if it's not properly salted it will start to rot, i have a mate that has happened to, all the hair fell out etc.. The instructions they give are pretty good you really need to follow them though, like washing in very cold water so the hair doesn't fall out etc.. You can ring them too if you are stuck i rang them before ordering and ended up having a chat for about half an hour very nice people indeed. The salting and tanning bit is the easy bit it's the stretching that is a killer it takes a lot of effort. They come out slightly blue btw.
Here are a few bits of mine i'm making a few book covers out of mine and a knife sheath.

TicTacDoc

that looks awesom! what hides are they? Sika & fox?

juice1304

Thanks:)
They are all sika/red hybrids. The small one is a young calf i had to put out of it's misery. It was missing the lower half of one of it's legs and the bone was exposed, the leg had gone gangrenous it stank to high heavens. :eek:

TicTacDoc

wow thats insane about the foot. but the tanning seemed to turn out quite well

FISMA

TicTacDoc wrote: »

Anyone any tips on solutions or cures they're used for tanning hides?

I thought about doing this myself. However, some of the chemicals involved are not the sort I want hanging about the garage.

I remember speaking with a lad once who explained how native Americans used to brain-tan hides. That is, they used the brain of the animal to make a paste or mash of some sort to use in tanning.

I wondering if it is possible to do a nice job, by modern standards, with low impact chemicals.

Eddie B

FISMA wrote: »

I thought about doing this myself. However, some of the chemicals involved are not the sort I want hanging about the garage.

I remember speaking with a lad once who explained how native Americans used to brain-tan hides. That is, they used the brain of the animal to make a paste or mash of some sort to use in tanning.

I wondering if it is possible to do a nice job, by modern standards, with low impact chemicals.

Yea you put the brains of the animal into a blender and blend it up to rub on hide! Brains can be frozen till needed!

There is a great demo on utube showing the whole process using brain to tan a racoon hide from start to finnish in 2 part recordings!

There's a whole lot of work involved but its the real traditional way of doing the job!

Grizzly 45

FWIW.I find you really do need a flensing knife and a proper flensing pole to do a professional job on your hides.The flensing knife is a two handled affair like a draw knife thats rather blunt ,but to make up a proper rounded flensing pole is the hard job.
You really need to get every last bit of meat and fat off the hide for the salt to work properly and if done right it will soak up moisture like nobodies busisness.
I usually leave deer and goats for about 3 weeks depending on hide and weather conditions.
I tanned mine with appx 3 cups of sulphuric acid to a plastic dustbin worth of cold water.
You can get sulphuric acid from old car batteries,as most chemists will look askence at you if you ask them for a pint of this these days ,and concentrate by boiling it OUTSIDE until you get dense white fumes .CAUTION .DO NOT BREATHE in those fumes they are toxic! Have a water hose handy to douse yourself with water if this comes into ontact with skin or clothes and wear protective eye wear and gloves as this stuff is seriously corrosive .
Store obviously away from kids,pets etc and in a marked bottle stating its acid!
Anyways,do this once you have enough acid from two batteries for at least six hides.
You need to flush the hides with cold water at least every 12 hours.So have a -nother bin full of fresh water ready.Find rain water is better as it has less chemicals in it. do this about four times and then hang your hide over something to dry out as you would a bath towel.When it is damp some people paint in a bit of horse hoof oil either before or after they have stretched the hide
I leave appx 3 weeks depending on the hide tacked on a old garage door.

Should add this is a method that works fine if you want a hide for a floor or wall type affair,dunno if it would work if you were considering making buckskin or leather for clothing etc.

wexfordman2

I did my first two last season and we'll pleased with them. I didn't use any chemicals, I went the brain tan method, if you look it up on YouTube you will find plenty of examples.

Must post some pics.