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Sunday, December 5, 2010
Brain tanning deer hides part III: Graining the deer hide.
4 comments:
Anonymous
said...
I have a question about hides. I recently got a few tanned (with the battery acid method) deer hides and one elk hide with the hair on from a friend. Now I noticed that some of the hair is slipping in patches and I was hoping to remove all of it. Can I simply soak it in a lye solution and remove the hair or would this affect the hide? What would you do in this situation. Thanks!
by battery acid, I assume you mean alkali, did you tan them? hair slippage is common in any style of tanning, but some are not just a "shed" but full on mange-look to them. hollow folicle hair like deer and elk are like this. these mammals actually have natural oil in the empty space and through time these oils leave the hair, leaving the hairs brittle, some break off some fall out, but it's not to the point of undesireable. if your is exhibiting un-natural slippage, it could be for a number of reasons: 1. if you tanned them with the alkali method then yes they will fall out, and not much you can do about it (more on this in a bit) 2. if they werre tanned in a factory, it was most likely a form of vegtable tanning which uses a form of natural and synthetic tanninc acids. 3. moisture in the hide, and stored in an air tight container.
the first one, as described in the video tutorials is there to specifically supersaturate the hide and clean the mucus, a natural by product of this is easy hair removal, one could even make rawhide with this method, if you are carful not to knick the epidermis, unlike the Buckskin process, where you are try to completly remove the epidermis(grain). If you choose to do a hair on tanning, for your next endeavour, I recommend omitting the bucking, and go rigt to braining from the fleshing. this process is more involved than it sounds, you actually remove the mebrane and even some of the dermis from the flesh side, and forcibly brain and rebrain several time through out the tanning process, a series of softening and rebrainings is done through the course of several days, getting the hide just perfect to absorb the dressing *brain*. Why? well becuase you can't clean out the fiber network with alkali to make the hide ready to accept the dressing, otherwise the hair slips, so now you have to force it through, and this is a tedious and labor intensive project (this is why I get paid well for tanning buffalo robes) Now for the second situation, if you hide is done in a factory and you are losing hair, there is not much to do, accept demand a refund, or cut it up into project, peices. Why? not many tanneries give away all there secrets, let alone even some (I'm an exception, and shunned by some of the tanning world for this) and because of this you really don't know what you could retreat it to remove the remaining. if it was a tanic acid, no. the fibers are forever married to the acids, and conditioned by the oils (usually neats foot) and it's far more trouble than it's worth- like spending a hundred dollars at the claw machine for a 25 cent toy. the third; well you pretty much have something that needed to be dried before storage, but hind sight... so if this is the case again not much to do for it.
finally. if this is your own brain tanning, again, after those fibers are oil coated, it's really not worth the effort in trying to strip them down again, and seldom comes out in an even enough consistency to help, to bring it back into the basic bath of alkali. lye, KOH, Hard wood ash any of it, will just make a bigger mess
solutions: try stretching it on a frame, soak it first, then dry scrape after the ENTIRE hide dries. Get a pair of electric clippers and try shaving it(you'll still have stubble wet it and put it on you fleshing beam and try graining small pathceh and see how that does.
Thanks for the great info! The hides were not tanned comercially and were tanned using a method like the one found at this site which does not use brains http://www.motherearthnews.com/modern-homesteading/how-to-tan-a-hide.aspx
I will try your suggestion on a smaller piece of hide and let you know how it turnes out if you like.
4 comments:
I have a question about hides. I recently got a few tanned (with the battery acid method) deer hides and one elk hide with the hair on from a friend. Now I noticed that some of the hair is slipping in patches and I was hoping to remove all of it. Can I simply soak it in a lye solution and remove the hair or would this affect the hide? What would you do in this situation.
Thanks!
by battery acid, I assume you mean alkali, did you tan them? hair slippage is common in any style of tanning, but some are not just a "shed" but full on mange-look to them. hollow folicle hair like deer and elk are like this. these mammals actually have natural oil in the empty space and through time these oils leave the hair, leaving the hairs brittle, some break off some fall out, but it's not to the point of undesireable. if your is exhibiting un-natural slippage, it could be for a number of reasons:
1. if you tanned them with the alkali method then yes they will fall out, and not much you can do about it (more on this in a bit)
2. if they werre tanned in a factory, it was most likely a form of vegtable tanning which uses a form of natural and synthetic tanninc acids.
3. moisture in the hide, and stored in an air tight container.
the first one, as described in the video tutorials is there to specifically supersaturate the hide and clean the mucus, a natural by product of this is easy hair removal, one could even make rawhide with this method, if you are carful not to knick the epidermis, unlike the Buckskin process, where you are try to completly remove the epidermis(grain). If you choose to do a hair on tanning, for your next endeavour, I recommend omitting the bucking, and go rigt to braining from the fleshing. this process is more involved than it sounds, you actually remove the mebrane and even some of the dermis from the flesh side, and forcibly brain and rebrain several time through out the tanning process, a series of softening and rebrainings is done through the course of several days, getting the hide just perfect to absorb the dressing *brain*. Why? well becuase you can't clean out the fiber network with alkali to make the hide ready to accept the dressing, otherwise the hair slips, so now you have to force it through, and this is a tedious and labor intensive project (this is why I get paid well for tanning buffalo robes)
Now for the second situation, if you hide is done in a factory and you are losing hair, there is not much to do, accept demand a refund, or cut it up into project, peices. Why? not many tanneries give away all there secrets, let alone even some (I'm an exception, and shunned by some of the tanning world for this) and because of this you really don't know what you could retreat it to remove the remaining. if it was a tanic acid, no. the fibers are forever married to the acids, and conditioned by the oils (usually neats foot) and it's far more trouble than it's worth- like spending a hundred dollars at the claw machine for a 25 cent toy.
the third; well you pretty much have something that needed to be dried before storage, but hind sight... so if this is the case again not much to do for it.
finally. if this is your own brain tanning, again, after those fibers are oil coated, it's really not worth the effort in trying to strip them down again, and seldom comes out in an even enough consistency to help, to bring it back into the basic bath of alkali. lye, KOH, Hard wood ash any of it, will just make a bigger mess
solutions:
try stretching it on a frame, soak it first, then dry scrape after the ENTIRE hide dries.
Get a pair of electric clippers and try shaving it(you'll still have stubble
wet it and put it on you fleshing beam and try graining small pathceh and see how that does.
hope this helps!
Thanks for the great info!
The hides were not tanned comercially and were tanned using a method like the one found at this site which does not use brains http://www.motherearthnews.com/modern-homesteading/how-to-tan-a-hide.aspx
I will try your suggestion on a smaller piece of hide and let you know how it turnes out if you like.
Hello Joshua, viewing a few if your videos. Thank you so much, it helped a lot. Can you post the plans for your double frame for frame softening?
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