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Tan-A-Long

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HoBow:
I have had a few people pm me about doing a tan-a-long, so here is my humble attempt.  I will be tanning this hide for the TomB memorial project, while PatB will be turning it into a quiver. 

There are many many ways to tan, I choose the "salt alum" tan because it is an easy method with most of the chemicals needed easy to find.  This will take a few weeks to complete and I will be tanning three hides and some other pieces as I post, so please be patient.  The hides I will be tanning are axis deer.  They are very thin, so they tear easy when cleaning, but tan easier because of how thin they are.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask or pm me.

Pictures:
1- male and female axis deer
2- salt I use.  I have read not to use iodized salt, but I have used iodized and noniodized with no problems.  Perhaps if someone else knows why or have had issues, you could chime in.
3-  You can see I have a few tears near the edge, which will not be a problem for this project as they will be cut off.  I just cut the big chunks of meat off and the rest will come off easier once the salt pulls the moisture out....it took me several hides before I figured this out.
4- This is what the hide looks like from the front. 
5- I start by pouring a pile of salt in the middle
6- Spread the salt out across the entire hide.  Make sure you rub it in the edges really well.  This will help you later.  I will do this twice and in between will take a knife and scrape off the leftover meat and fat.  I leave the salt on there a day or two depending on the humidity level





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Pat B:
Jeff, this is cool. Thanks for your contribution to Tom's memorial. I'm sure Patrick will really appreciate the effort and gesture.
  Axis deer are cool looking. Where did you get the skins?

DanaM:
Thanks for taking the time to do this Jeff, wondering what type of alum ya use as here at the plant we liguid alum as a coagulant

HoBow:
Pat,
I have a buddy who keeps a heard of about 70 and thins them out as needed.  He kills about 20 per year.  He use to throw them out until I asked for them and I have been tanning them ever since.  Anytime I go out to his house, I always make sure I bring my camera and telephoto lense because I can usually get photos.  This time of year, they are not that skittish so they let me get fairly close. 

Dana,
I use powdered aluminum sulfate.  This is the same stuff that you can get at wal-mart for making pickles, but is much cheaper to buy in bulk.  One ounce at Walmart is around $5, while I bought a 50 lb bag for $18.  I could probably do about 100 hides with that amount, but I've made trades for hides and will send enough as this is by far the hardest ingredient to get (and it is easy if you go to the right places.)

HoBow:
I left the salt on for 2 days.  If you have to leave it longer, it is no problem.
Pictures:

1- This is the knife I use to cut and scrape the meat and fat off.  You know you have left the salt on long enough when you can scrape the edge of the meat and then pull it off with your hands.

2-  This was how much I scraped off

3-  This is the hide mostly cleaned off.  Notice it has shrunk up some, but this is OK.  Eventually, I will pull and stretch the wrinkles out.

4-  I resalted the hide one more time.  I did not salt it as heavy this go round since it was mostly clean.  If there was still quite a bit of fat and meat, I would have added more salt.

5-  This is all the material when I finished.  Some people will pull the meat out and reuse the salt, but the salt is so cheap I never bothered doing that.  I will leave the salt on for another day or two.

At this point, you have rawhide with the hair on.  If you wanted to put it up in storage, make sure you scrapped it well and add some extra salt.  Fold in in half, flesh side to flesh side, and roll it up like a sleeping bag.  Set it up vertically for a few days to let any moisture come out and put it in a paper bag (not plastic, it needs to breath).  I have done this on several hides and had no hair slippage.  If you are making leather without the hair, slippage would not be an issue anyway.


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