How do you tan hides?

[Rabbits by Accident]

Hi again!

Planning ahead here, I know I can look on YouTube and see all kinds of people do all kinds of things, but I thought I would ask the experts -

What process do you use to tan hides? Years and years and years ago I raised rabbits and I remember using sulfuric acid I think or battery acid of some sort. It was extremely simple and the hides were beautiful, soft and long lasting.

Thanks for any info!

Liz

 

[Ducklove74]

I usually pickle all my hides in water citric acid and salt, then just dry and work the hide...if I tan after, I use brains and then smoke them, but most time I don't need them to be waterproofed so just stop after working hide.

 

[Zee-Man]

It is a long process. How you pickle the hide determines if the hair will stay on or slip. Alkalai solutions will slip the hair. You can simply salt or air dry them. If you have the space, you can cover the flesh side with wax paper, roll it up, put it in a zip lock, and freeze it till you are ready.

Brains are widely used. Supposedly you only need the animals own brains, but that always seems a small amount to me. You can get pig brains in the market or at least from a butcher shop. Brains have a particular kind of fat in them. That fat is also found in the cape fat and egg yolks. Mix the brains, yolks, rendered cape in water. Soak your dried skin until wetted, or if not dried soak it for a short time. Then on to the next step.

The rest of the process is one of rubbing the fat into the skin and stretching. Stretching is done manually and using some sort of poll. The poll could be a fence post, a rail, or something purpose built. Continue to rub and stretch until the skin remains subtle. Deer and cow hide take a long time, more than 3 to 4 hours or more depending on size. I've not done rabbit yet, but I would expect a thin skin to take much less time.

 

[MissMuja]

There is more than one way to do it. Usually they are frozen so I put them in salty water. When they are unfrozen I remove all the fat and the thin skin wich is sliky to keep the leather. Once that is done, I put the pelt in water with alun and salt for almost 2 weeks and I frequently stir the water. After that, they dry on a rack for some days and each day I work the pelt. When they are almost dry, I apply leather oil.

 

[Zee-Man]

Alum is an astringent. As such, it is used in tanning to help dry out the skin. It causes the cells to contract and thus squeeze out water. @MissMuja , I was under the impression that alum would cause the hair to slip? Salt is used for drying in a similar manner. It changes the osmotic pressure in the cells, also squeezing water out. You see this quite visibly when you make sauerkraut, all that liquid coming out during the salting stage is forced out by osmotic pressure.

Like sauerkraut, salt inhibits many bacteria, however, it promotes the lacto-bacters. We like the malic and lactic acid they give us, which further acidify the skin/food which makes the environment even more hostile for bacteria and mold. There is an odor involved. So it may be advisable to have a salted skin stored out of the living area.

I've also used ash to prep a skin. Ash will give a precurser to lye making fat easier to scrape. Going the other way from neutral pH than salt/lacto-bacter harmful microbes are inhibited. But, ash will certainly make the hair slip.

I attempted tanning with bark once. Keeping the skin submerged was not a pleasant experience. I ended up losing that skin. Likely there wasn't enough tannin in solution. These days, if I were to try tannin I would extract it from acorns. The smaller the acorn and/or larger the cap the more tannin it contains.

 

[Ducklove74]

I have never had hair slip using alum... as long as the pelt was not compromised to begin with. And if that's the case it's almost impossible to save...I hear that stop rot can be used but I personally have never tried it. Alum will actually swell the hide setting the fur. I've only used alum for rabbit pelts, but it is a fairly easy process as far as preservation goes prior to actual tanning.

 

[Preitler]

I use Alum too , never had hair slip.

Process is washing, pickling in 1/10 salt solution with formic acid at PH3-4 for 2 days, fleshing (it's easier then than fresh), heating the solution and adding 1/10 of the weight Alum, letting it cool and put the furs in for about a week keeping PH at around 3 with formic acid (check now and then the first day or so). - doesn't matter much how long, once had them there for a month without the fur slipping.

Then I neutralize the solution with soda or NaOH ( A big canister of that stuff ended up in my somehow) to PH6, keep adjusting the PH until it doesn't change anymore, leave the pelts in there for 1 day. Then rinsing and drying, Breaking when halway dry, or I do that later by dampening and then putting a little leather grease on the skin.

Warning: I don't encourage anyone to use NaOH, I just happen to have it around, but that stuff makes me a little nervous. I don't use the sulfuric acid, only have a bottle with a very high concentration, formic acid is harmless and easy to dose.

 

[eco2pia]

So, I normally used to use a muratic acid pickle, and I thought I would try an alum version. I had heard alum was better at making a soft, pretty white hide.

My pelt has been drying and I've been working it a little each day, but it's

1. Weirdly oily, despite the fact that the skin was well fleshed and is quite thin. The rabbit was also fat, but jeez.

2. The hide has dried quite stiff despite my best efforts.

3. It looks raw.

I don't know if I pulled it out too soon (low temps and only 2.5 weeks) or if my alum was garbage (food grade from spice section of the grocery store as I was caught unprepared), or if I just didn't use enough.

In any case I have 2 more hides in a new brine. I'm wondering if I can throw this one back or???

 

[Blue bunny barn]

1 cup alum and 1 cup salt for each gallon of water. I am relatively new to the process, but I have successfully "tanned" 10 hides so far.

I make 3 gallons of this solution and do 3 or 4 hides each time. They say you can reuse the solution for another round but I find it doesn't do as good of a job the second time. I'm still learning but it does work.

7 to 10 days in the solution depending on the hide.