Just the sound of it makes ladies everywhere gag and ask "you used WHAT?!"
Let me break it down as best I can. Skin is composed of some really basic, but complicated, components. All matter is made of atoms and molecules and the bonds formed between shared electrons. Skin is no exception.
Lucky for us the main constituent is loose hydrogen bonds that fill the space between the fibers with mucus or "ground substance". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collagen
Once the skin is flushed, either by decomposition, prolonged soaking, salting, or soaking in an alkali solution, it is ready to bind with new things because all it's building blocks are polarized, sort of like a magnet.
Brain itself is primarily made of amino acids. Acids are the opposite of alkali meaning they will add a + end of one molecule, to bind with the - end of the skin fibers. The advantage to this is that amino acids are fatty acids. That's right, greasy. They make an excellent conditioner for your hands and are used in lots of different cosmetic products (amino acids, not brains lol). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acids
Amino acids are theoretically the "building blocks of life" in science circles. How convenient!
Our medium is water. The mucus in the skin is mostly water. The bucking is done with a water solution, and the brains will be in solution in water. What makes this great is that water evaporates and is NOT polar so it doesn't actually bind on a molecular level with any of our work. Water is truly an amazing thing!
But this is only part of the actual process. Brains won't actually tan the skin. They only serve as a lubricant and stabilizer for the skin. The actual tan comes from wood smoke. Smoke contains (among many other things) different forms of formaldehyde, primarily glutaraldehyde gas, which happens to also be a polar molecule! Also very convenient!
If you brain a skin, then wash it before it is smoked, the brains wash out and you are back to square one. Why? because your molecules are not complete! For this to work you need your stuff to become insoluble in water, that is to say, stable so they won't "unbind" and wash out. Smoke is that last key element. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutaraldehyde
These are the basic elements of braintanning. It is a laborious process and while this makes it seem really scientific and complicated, with this basic understanding the rest of the process will really make sense. By understanding why doing something works, we open ourselves up to a whole new level of experimenting, learning, and growing.
*Also, to make a special note here. There are many recipes for making braintan buckskin. I have tried different methods and techniques, and I've weighed the results against my own scales and figured out what produces the results I like. This is what works for me. I do not want this to turn into any sort of argument or spitting contest. If you do things differently and think my method is wrong, feel free to start a new thread showing how you do it. The process is daunting and confusing enough to the uninitiated without 10 different people interrupting with 10 different methods.
It is not the method, but the science behind the method that makes it work.
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