Tanning 3

I finally got around to scraping that hide yesterday. I used my home-made scraper which I love. I basically just took a 5" long piece of quarter inch thick steel, bolted it to a tree branch and rounded off the top of the end until it was sharp.

This is the hide almost completely scraped.

The deer wasn't skinned very well and it was kept frozen with the fat and meat on for about a year. So, as you can see, there are a lot of grease burns around the edges and it's a pretty misshapen hide. Next, I used my sand stone to scrape the areas around holes. I also sanded all over the whole hide just to make sure I didn't miss anything and to soften it up. When I was done it had this nice fuzzy texture.

I cut the hide out of the frame, leaving behind the grease burned areas. I would hope for full use of a hide, but maybe next time. This is still going to make a decent bit of buckskin. I didn't have any brains, and around here even the redneck hunters will kick you out of the butcher shop if you ask for brains, so I'm using eggs. I've heard this works, though I've never tried it. There really doesn't seem to be any common consensus as to how many eggs to use per hide. I've heard anything from one to a dozen. So, I used five, because that's what I had. I broke them all and dumped them into a bucket. Then I added just enough water to cover the hide completely.

That is where the hide will have to stay for today. I don't have the time to pull it out right now and start stretching and pulling all day. Maybe I'll try anyway...we'll see.