Braintanning the simple (or overcomplicated) way

[your_comforting_company]

Provided time and work schedule, I do about 10 hides a year. Depending on their intended use, I might frame some of them. This year I have about a dozen that I've collected from various sources and in various degrees of butchered.

It takes about a week to do one.. so if you have enough buckets, you could technically finish one one day, and scrape the next hide the next, repeatably. Since I have a job and other hobbies, I can't tan as much as I'd like to.. a man has to go fishing sometime! I would think with proper planning, a person could tan out several a day, every other day all year.
Of course it's too hot here in the summer!!

I have hand stretched two in one day. Stored one in frozen brains due to weather and as the other one was finished, the humidity got right and I got to finish both.

Like I say, it depends on a person's schedule, but I'd say for a first hide, expect around 24 hours of time in it. Once you get a feel for it, you might turn one out in half that time. There are several periods of "waiting" for things to happen, like the buck, soak, or rinse, so I don't count that time.

The first year I only did 3 from hunting season because I wasn't sure I'd even like tanning, the next year I was picking up every roadkill I could get my hands on (they seldom have holes in them!) Ever since, I take what I can get that is in good shape. I have to use some discretion because some of them are really knifed up. I'll usually offer free skinning and quartering in exchange for the skin and head.

Roofing for a living also has some to do with it, because my energy level is usually pretty low after a hard day.

Cold air does not hold moisture as well as warm air, so those of you who live in colder or more arid (dry & warm) climates could probably finish 2 per day. Many people who live "the simple life" tan for a living along with teaching classes. A person could easily make on average $300 per day provided they have a buyer for their hides.. And a 500 gallon tank of elbow grease!

Scraping is very straightforward and self regulating. The main thing is finding the rhythm, and keeping the work comfortable. I should only take a few hours to soften a hide in the right weather.

I only do a few each year because of time constraints. A dozen is plenty for me.

I hope I answered the question LOL!

[your_comforting_company]

I do believe I will be forever a braintanner. I'm hooked. There is nothing quite like it to me and it gave me a whole new appreciation for the world around me. A deer is truly an all in one package.

[your_comforting_company]

I wanted to put bucking times into perspective if only for the sake of RWC. I just tanned out a small hide that only took 2 days in wood ashes to buck. It scraped so easy, I did both sides in about 2 hours.
Considering how hard a time RWC had with tearing grain on his hide, I would come to the conclusion to discount calcium carbonate as a reliable bucking solution. If possible, use wood ashes, or pickling lime. I still won't recommend KOH, household lye, on account of the dangers involved in handling it.

[your_comforting_company]

Have you ever hand-washed any of your garments? Washing buckskin is no different. I would like to point out a few things that I prefer.

Once your buckskin has been smoked, it is forever preserved in it's soft state, making it washable. Buckskin is NOT water repellent! It is quite the opposite and will readily soak up any water (or other liquids) it comes into contact with.

It's completely fine to throw your buckskin in the washing machine. Although, I prefer to hand wash mine, since I did go to all the trouble to make it myself. I also prefer to use less harsh soaps, like colgate, fels naptha, or lye soap. A little borax in the wash will help loosen any spots that are heavily soiled, and if it's worse than that, a small brush will suffice to scrub.

I like to use the tub as it gives me plenty of room to see the whole garment.
Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

Don't scrub too hard or you'll remove a lot of that beautiful, soft knap.
Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

A sopping wet buckskin shirt...
Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

...Wrung out by hand
Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

Notice the dry spots.. it dries very quickly!
Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

Then hang it OVER your solar powered clothes dryer. If you use clothes pins, the weight will most likely distort the shape of your hide as it dries. Nobody wants those unattractive "spikes" on their shoulders, do they?
Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

Every once in a while, as it dries, go out to the clothesline, and stretch the garment to and fro, as if you were hand-softening it again. This usually only requires a minute or so to move the fibers around, and replace the garment on the line. Those of you who use a clothesline to dry your modern clothes will know that even cotton garments can get a little "stiff on the line".
Once it is completely dry again, use your buffing tool to remove any bristly knap that might have hardened on the inside and outside, and your buckskin will be just as soft and comfortable as ever! 5 minutes of stretching and 2 minutes of buffing will bring it back to it's chamois state.

Really Simple stuff! This is the best part of buckskin to me.. it is equal to "modern" clothing in care, but MUCH more durable, and oh-so comfortable!

Repeated washing will lighten the colors, so if you must, you can re-smoke your buckskins to restore the color. This can be a challenge with shirts and pants and making "hide sacks" from garments. I would recommend using a small smoke house to resmoke garments.

[your_comforting_company]

As Luck would have it I grabbed another huge skin from the freezer. Fleshing was easy, and bucking for 4 days made most of it grain fairly easily. Everywhere except the NECK.

This has to be a rutting buck, because the skin was nearly 1/2" thick at the top of the neck. The hair was slipping everywhere BUT the neck, so I went ahead and grained it anyway. Since most of it had been scraped down to the "buckskin" I couldn't stick it back in the ashes but the grain absolutely refused to seperate at the neck.

My point is having a backup. I had half a can of pickling lime left. Being white it won't stain the skin!
So I mixed up half a bucket and soaked the hide another 2 days.
*The hide doesn't smell bad, so I know it's not rotting, even though it's been a little warm lately*
I scraped a good bit of grain off tonight, but it's still not good enough to suit me, so I stuck it back in the buck and will try more tomorrow. So far I have as much time in scraping the neck (about 4 hours so far) as I do in fleshing, membraning, and graining.

Each skin is a little different. some are tough, some are soft. Some get stiff spots no matter what you do, and others soften like a dream.
My second point is this:

This is what "usually" works for me. I'm always adapting and changing nuances in my method to suit the weather or the skin (or other factors). What I've listed here as "instructions" should be regarded more as "guidelines" and I hope that I've explained the things that need to happen, regardless of how you accomplish them. Understanding "why" gives us options for "how".

[rwc1969]

That's interesting. I wonder if a younger deer would be harder to buck the hair off than an older one, or visa versa? My deer was quite young, probably 1-1/2 years old and it was tough. Although, it could have just been the CaCo3.

[your_comforting_company]

I'm really leaning toward it being the CaCO3. I've heard others talk about not bucking at all and I just can't imagine the difficulty of graining one that has not been bucked.

I think I'll buy some CaCO3 and try it on a small buck my uncle killed this year. blew a big hole right in the middle of it and wasted a backstrap, so if it goes bad, it's not like I will lose anything.

About to head outside and have another go at that neck.. MAN it's tough!! this'll be my 5th day working on JUST the neck. But I WILL get it soft. I've only been bested by one skin so far and that was due to my rotting thumb.

Ideally you want young does, in the 120-150lb range, for ease of working, and softness. Of course, I'll tan whatever I can get LOL.

[your_comforting_company]

So I got outside around 8 this morning and it was still foggy, but there were no clouds so I said "Oh, It'll be a great day to soften this skin". so I scraped over both sides one last time, wrung it, fixed up my brain soup, got it dunked, and was started for about 30 minutes softening when the clouds started rolling in around 10:30 or 11. It stayed cloudy till dark, but I got it mostly done, and just before sunset it started raining.
@$#$&*!
So I had to make a fire in the shop and force it dry.. it was softening so beautifully too.. humidity went sky high and temperature dropped.. What can you do? deal with it LOL. Welcome to South Georgia.

It'll have to be a re-braining project now cause I gotta work tomorrow. At least it's "saved" where I did manage to get it soft. and I saved the leftover brains that I wrung out of it, so I should still have plenty since it came with the deer (according to the saying)

I still love tanning, even though it can be frustrating when the weather won't cooperate!

[your_comforting_company]

But I did it.
Yeah it was tough, and the weather was bad, but now, it's soft and supple and sweet smelling. Temps got low again last night and it was sooo warm on the bed.

This is a HUGE deer skin. I hope the pic puts it in perspective. It took a lot more work than a small doe would, but I didn't let it whoop me. Even got the thick neck respectably soft.

I finished it on the 31st and let it air out a little in the shed. I took it to work with me and let the lady that lives there open it, so I hadn't seen it yet.
Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

[your_comforting_company]

The following pictures show the buckskin up close. What you are looking at is the fibers of the "fiber network". You can actually see each fiber. Remember this is collagen, which is a protien chain.
Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

So all that technical talk about molecules and ions, and things we don't normally consider to be really tangible, are visible!
Buckskin is an amazing thing! It teaches chemistry, physics, and hard work. It reminds me that there is still a little magic left in this concrete-and-steel world we live in.

[your_comforting_company]

I have to go back on myself here just a little.

At one point I said that if you shred your hide, it must be rotten, or your tool is too sharp, but I found another case where you might tear it up.

Not sure where I got this little bitty deer hide, but it's barely big enough to make underwear from. Being so young and tender, and using an aggressive (normal) scraping, put a couple holes in the edges. Most folks ain't gonna shoot one that little, so it's my first time scraping one that was that thin and tender.

If it's really small, the skin won't be tough enough to handle the normal scraping and you might tear holes. A little finesse will prevent holes, but admittedly, finesse is not really my thing. Live and learn!

[your_comforting_company]

Proper care from beginning to end.

When you get the skin off the animal, it's imperative to wash off any blood or bile that might be on the skin BEFORE storing it. I dug out two hides from the freezer a few days ago, to thaw. Well, I got busy building my beehive, and they were thawed for a good day longer than I should have let them go. When I opened the bags, the smell was pretty bad.

Crash just posted a thread about how sights, smells, or sounds trigger memories, and this is a similar case. I'm not sure words can describe it well enough. The FIRST thing that will spoil on a hide is bile (gut juice), then the blood, then the fat and meat, and lastly the hide itself. Each stage of spoilage has a different smell.
I did a good job skinning these, so there was very little fat on them and 0 meat.. so where was the smell coming from?

One hide was covered with "brown water" on one side. This brown water was from a blood pool. When blood spoils, it turns rusty/muddy brown and has a very different smell from rotting flesh or meat. The other hide had apparently been a gut-shot and had different-colored brown stains.

My point in this is that many of the aspects of tanning are not things someone can teach you, or even describe for the most part. Knowing and understanding these things can only be learned by doing.

I had another point to make here too.. When things start smelling bad, that means you are working very closely with bacteria and enzymes that can cause some serious problems if you have open cuts. As many of these as were done without protective clothing in ages past, I STRONGLY recommend you use PPE anyway.

After one day in pickling lime the smells are almost completely gone, meaning that the enzymes and bacteria have been neutralized by the buck. The "skin" itself was not rotting, and I can tell because it has a different smell, but this was blood and bile that was not properly washed out before storage.

I'm using pickling lime to buck these two hides for the demonstration this coming weekend. I won't have running water from a hose, so I wanted the hides to appear as clean as possible. Ashes make quite a mess. I'll be taking a bucket of ashes to explain that part of the process, but one of these two will be scraped into buckskin (I could have done that one in ashes..), ready to be brained, and the other will be to demonstrate scraping. With all it's "grossness" I want it to appear as clean and appealing as possible.
I sure hope lots of folks come out to the demo. They've been announcing it all last week on "Top of the Morning", and apparently folks are calling in every day for more details, and making reservations for the class, which tells me that there will be lots more paying classes in the future.

If your hide is stinky, handle it as little as is possible, and use your protective gear: rubber boots, apron, gloves.

[your_comforting_company]

I was wondering if RWC might humor me and try to describe what buckskin feels like?

[randyt]

You mentioned that you'll always be a braintanner. I agree it's really a cool process. Have you ever wetscraped a fresh skin right from the deer with out bucking? It scrapes well, it's the only wetscrape that I've had good luck with. Sometimes though I leave it in the shade overnight and that loosens up the grain even more so.
I've read that the commanches were known for their "white" buckskin. Do you have any info on their process? It sounds like they didn't smoke their hides and if so how did they remain soft or clean.

[your_comforting_company]

I have tried to scrape a fresh green hide without bucking. I do NOT recommend it unless you are a masochist. If you think a fresh skin grains easily, you should try bucking your hides and you'll find it is like butter. It's purely self torture and a heck of a lot of extra effort to scrape a green hide (in my experiences). I buck all my hides and can completely scrape one on both sides in about 2-2 1/2 hours. I have one rinsing in the bucket now that is a fairly large skin that only took an hour to grain and 30 minutes to membrane. The grain slipped off in ribbons from just below the neck rim (about 6" down) all the way to the rump.
Buck your next hide and I think you'll find it grains much easier.
Soaking in water only serves to swell the hide, which would make it seperate more easily at the papillary layer. But this does not flush out the hydrogen bonds as well as bucking does. The grain should slough off from the fiber network in ribbons. If it isn't that easy, you're just burning calories, when you could just wait a little longer for it to buck and spend less time at the beam. In Steven Edholm's book "The Ancient Art of Braintanning" he mentions soaking the hides in a creek of running water to let it reach a certain level of decomposition, eliminating the need for bucking step, and effectively flushing out the mucus. Timing is critical when you are allowing things to rot; if you don't catch it in time, it's wasted and if you go at it too soon, it's just as difficult as scraping green. I prefer to arrest the bacteria and enzymes that cause things to decompose, so that I'm not scraping a festering cesspool.
White buckskin is smoked (to my knowledge anyway). To make it white, you soak it in fermented urine. The urea will "bleach" the smoke back out. I think Hunter63 discussed this somewhere on the boards.
In medieval times, people would save their urine in large kettles to sell to tanneries.

Also of note, tho I'm not sure it was the comanche method, sometimes canine dung was used in place of bucking (called bating), then the hides were chewed soft (saliva reacting with the dung as the "braining" step), and fresh urine applied. This somehow circumvents the smoking process through chemical reactions that I do not fully understand, mostly because I don't collect dog droppings, nor are my teeth in good enough shape to be chewing on dookie saturated skins.
After smoking, you could wash your buckskin several times and it will be almost white. I'll try to remember to take a picture of my shirt again since it's been washed.

While I don't agree with all the info in this article, based on my own experiences and what little I know about science> http://www.publicbookshelf.com/publi...oryof_cff.html
It is a good "primer" with some info on the questions you asked, and much of the info is accurate. Particularly we are working with collagen fibers and NOT gelatine, which is the "goop" that we want to get out of the skin in order to tan it, and which is the primary constituent of "hide glue" and jell-o. Take what you want from that article, but I encourage you to do more research on the actual constituents of skin. Several items in that article are inaccurate by my account.

I hope I've answered your questions. Let me know if there's any way I can help!

[rwc1969]

Feels like chamois kind of, very soft, not like leather at all, completely different, indescribable really.

[randyt]

thanks for the info, that's interesting.

I have grained green hides, I thought it went well. When I buck a hide it seems to bunch up when I try to scrape it. sometimes a divot will come out of the hide. I should give it another try.

[your_comforting_company]

Try pulling the hide tight across your beam and taking shorter strokes until it gets realigned lenghtwise of the beam. The bunching is something I've learned to work with as the buck makes the hide much more "rubbery". When the hide reaches it's "just right" stage for scraping, the grain peels off in long ribbons.
When I place a hide on the beam I pull it lengthwise, then grab the sides and pull straight down, stretching it widthwise over the beam also. This helps keep the whole skin surface in contact with the beam. If you just throw it up on the beam and get to work, bunching can be frustrating. Might be worth a try to see if the stretching works for you. Seriously, the ease that bucking brings makes it worth the wait in my experience.
The last green hide I tried to scrape bruised my hands because the scraping was so tough.

[RandyRhoads]

YCC- Does it have to be HARDWOOD ashes or are they just better than soft woods? What about ashes from other things, such as burning junk mail?

[RandyRhoads]

Also can you help with these problems i'm having.

These are pics from half way through fleshing.

Am I taking off too much/the wrong layer fleshing? Or is the white part the right one.
DSCN0363.JPGDSCN0360.JPG


I have holes tearing alot, is this because i'm taking too much off, just because rabbit is so thin, or what?

Also some of the holes tearing are actually tearing from the back! They don't go all the way through, but while i'm fleshing I see weird spots and turn the hide over, and there's a big spot with no hair, even though the other side isn't torn. What the hell.....

DSCN0366.JPGDSCN0361.JPG

Also how do you store the brains until you're ready to use while bucking? Just leave them in the head and hand it up in a cool place?