Main Discussion Area > HowTo's and Build-a-longs
Tan-A-Long
Pat B:
This is coming along well.
HoBow:
Next, you have to wash all the salt off. I lay it on the gray on spray it with a hose really well for a few minutes. Now to mix the borax solution. I use warm water (not hot- you don't want to cook the hide) and mix in Borax until the saturation point (until no more will mix in and settles to the bottom). Let the hide sit in this solution for about 24 hours. If it is colder, an extra day or two will not hurt, but no in hot weather as this could cause hair slippage. Once the hide(s) are in the solution, I weigh them down with rocks or buckets full of water.
Pictures:
1- Wash the hide off well
2- This is the Borax I buy at Wal-Mart. Some women keep it in the laundry room, so ask.
3- Hides in the solution
4- Hides weighted down
All this step is doing is neutralizing the hide to prepare it to dehair or pickle.
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HoBow:
I do not have pictures for the next step as I will not be dehairing these hides. Next hide I dehair, I will post photos of it. Here are the steps:
You need to prepare an alkali solution to a PH of 12 or 13. The easiest way to measure this is to buy the paper PH paper strips in my opinion. To increase the PH, I usually use caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) because that is easy for me to get. Other chemicals you could use include caustic potash (KOH or potassium hydroxide), lime, lye, or ashes from a fire pit (which is what the Indians used to expedite the process). You can also use the bark from pine trees, but this process is much slower. You could also weigh it down in a stream and let nature take its course, but I have never tried this. I let it sit in this solution for 2-3 days, about double that if the temperature is in the 30's and 40's. Let it sit until you can take your hand (with a rubber glove) and push the hair off fairly easily. Most should push off, but you may have to pull the hair out or hit it with a powerwasher (Beware of this as the hair will get everywhere and you will find it for the next 6 months ;D ) Once you have dehaired the hide, wash well with a hose and neutralize in the borax solution for another day or two. Now the hide is ready to pickle.
HoBow:
Now we are pickling the hide. Pickling the hide prepares it to soak in the tanning solution, or at least that was the way it was explained to me. Pickling the hide is no different than pickling cucumbers or any other vegetable. I chose to pickle these hides with vinegar since most would have easy access to this. You can use anything to bring the PH down between 2 and 3. I have used sulfuric acid (battery acid), sulfamic acid, and vinegar. Standard vinegar has a PH of 2.4, which is perfect for the hides. Apple cider vinegar has a PH of 2.1. It is probably a few dollars cheaper to use sulfuric acid on a per hide basis, but vinegar is so cheap anyway. The PH scale is logrythymic (a PH of 2 is 10 times stronger than a PH of 3 and a PH of 3 is 10 times stronger than 4, etc), so make sure the PH stays between 2-3. I pickle the hides for two days, but monitor them closely. I have had some hair slippage in this step, but never that bad.
Pictures
1- This is the vinegar I use. One gallon cost about $2.00 and you can add a half gallon of water and not affect the PH that much, but recheck it.
2- I moved the hides to a five gallon bucket because I could not get them covered in the larger container. In this bucket, I have three hides, several dew claw pieces, 2.5 gallons of vinegar, and one gallon of water.
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HoBow:
Now we finally are at the tanning stage. Pull the hides out of the pickling solution. You can reuse this as long as the PH is does not come back above 3. If it does, add a stronger acid to pull it back down. Rinse the hides again with a hose.
Now, mix the alum tanning solution- 1 lb alum, 8 oz salt, 4 oz of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) for every gallon of water. Mix it with warm water, but not hot as it will cook the hide into glue. I let the hide set for 3-4 days. You can not overtan it, so let set longer if possible. I let set 1 week. You want to check back every day and stir the hide and make sure there are no problems, like hair slippage if you are doing a hair on tan. Alum is an astringent, so slippage should not be an issue with this type of tan if you have made it this far.
Pictures:
1- Wash the hide of the picking solution
2- This is the aluminum sulfate
3- Sodium Carbonate or baking soda
4- The three chemicals that will turn this green hide into leather
5- The hides in the solution
6- Make sure you weigh the hides down. Anything not submersed will not be tanned. Turn every day and stir the solution to make sure everything gets tanned. The easy part is now over with. The fun is about to begin.
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