Hide tanning

[mchbowhunt99]

I need to tan a bunch of hides from animlas I have shot the two main ones are a coyote and a doe hide do any of yall tan your one hides? what do yall use for tanning solution? is there some special formula that I can make without buying an actual tanning solution? if you know let me know. Thanks!

[White Falcon]

Good helpful info here!

http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/directory#dir-2

[GatorBait]

I will check with my wife. I just did 20+ rabbits, but I cant remember what we used. I know I used kosher salt and battery acid, but I can't remember exact numbers

[sweetinlow660]

You can use animal brains (from the animal or a local processing/butcher shop. Eggs also work but not sure on the mixture. Check out brain tanning on the ole inner web.

[PondPopper]

Tanning hides is easy. Getting them soft without a tumbler is a trick.

[jimmyneutrontx]

In

[diego111993]

All I have done is salt them, I would love to find out how to make them more supple.

[Razorback01]

I ordered the chemicals from McKenzie Taxidermy Supply yesterday. They have "how-to" videos on their site, and along with a lot of salt, water, little baking soda I hope to produce something decent. I also expect a lot of work. I went slightly overboard and also got a Skiving knife/blades and a fleshing ball. I also built a fleshing beam.

Mostly these will be tanned for taxidermy mounts so they may not be a soft/supple leather. Next step will be ordering a form, eyes, ear butts, etc and try a shoulder mount.

Trying to put something together for my post-retirement starting in 2019.

[Bazo]

check out this thread

http://discussions.texasbowhunter.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78900

This is the one I'm going to follow when I get something to work with.

[60 Deluxe]

All I have done is salt them, I would love to find out how to make them more supple.

Quick lesson in tanning from a guy that used to do fifteen hundred a day

1. Stabilize your green hides and skins by placing hair side down. Remove any excess fat. Use rock salt for thick hides and fine salt for skins at approximately twenty percent of hide weight. Spread evenly and keep fresh water away from it until ready to tan. In a week or so the hide will be salt cured, sooner for a thin skin. Keep it dry and keep beatles away from it and you are good for several months.

2. Re hydrate with cool water. An old washing machine would be great for small skins. Agitate gently for about an hour then rinse for ten or fifteen minutes with fresh water.

3. Bate the hide- a bit of a problem here because I do not know where to get the stuff anymore (it has been thirty five years). This is the process that will open up the fibers and remove unwanted proteins. We used a surfactant and an enzyme. For the enzyme to find it's comfort zone and really work you need to get the "float" or water bath up to about 110-114 degrees. This is tricky because if you hit 120 you will start to get hair slip. I used a large tanning drum with a slotted door and would do a warm water rinse for about fifteen minutes then adjust the float, add the enzymes and surfactant and place a solid door in. Run the drum for a bit to still things up, then do soak cycles and agitate cycles every fifteen minutes or so. After about an hour I would put the slotted door in and run a cold water rinse for about ten minutes.

4. Pickle --add salt and cold water, test with a salometer, I will have to look up the salometer reading if you are interested. Fill a drum with cold water and add sufuric acid (amount is based on hide weight) slowly, stir it up and slowly add to the agitating mixture of hides, water, and salt. Let run about twenty minutes and pull a sample of the solution. Check the pH, should be 1.2 to 1.4. Agitate a while longer then do a final check on pH. If still o.k. drain off the solution. Your hide is now ready for tanning.

5 tanning. We used chrome. You probably can't get chrome so alum is an option. Alum is what is used for baseball leather. Your shoes, jackets, gloves, etc. are all chrome tanned. Saddle leather is vegetable tanned and is done similarly but also alot differently than what Ihave been describing. Veg tans were the norm for years but fell out of favor when the metals were found to produce a more stable leather with more options for use.

I won't get into the tanning, retanning, and fat liquoring steps because quite frankly, I don't know what chemicals are available for novice use. You can look around and see what is out there but I caution you that tanning is not a process than you do with a bag of magic elixir mixed with water and done in an old paint bucket. If any of you guys have any questions p.m. me. I still have most of my formulas and some pretty good books stashed at work that I can reference.

[swreeder70]

There is a product called rapid tan that works pretty good and is hard to mess up. What I have found is that the key to getting a good tan is prepping the hide and fleshing it as good as you can. All the fat, grease and meat has to be gone for the tan to work, no matter what method you end up doing.

Good luck...it is a lot of work, but worth the end product when done right.