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How can you tan skins easly at home?

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24 July 2007, 22:34
James Walker
How can you tan skins easly at home?
I Have been Hunting for a while now and wish to improve on my bushskills is their any way that i can tan skins at home and easly?
25 July 2007, 06:29
george roof
I don't know how "easy" it will be as to do a good job is going to take some learning curves. Fleshing and salting are first. There are several "paint on" tans that can be done to a hide and several more immersion types as well. All of them will not give you the soft hide I'm sure you're envisioning. That will take another separate step called "breaking" where the hide is worked back and forth over a dull edge of a post or a metal sheet after oiling the hide. Amy Ritchie has a website that explains it in pretty good detail but I'm not familiar with it. Go to the Taxidermy Net and type in "how to tan a hide" in the SEARCH block. Good luck.


RETIRED Taxidermist
25 July 2007, 07:07
DTala
in a word...NO. Lots of work and mess go into tanning. The place I use costs maybe $60 for a hair on deer, no way I'd do it for that.
troy


Birmingham, Al
25 July 2007, 11:52
Paul from nz
we put a bit of work into my brothers fellow skin and it came out really good! nice and soft
31 July 2007, 01:26
Jriley
I tanned one hide at home and it worked alright. The end result was a preserved hide that was a little stiff, but looks okay on the wall.
I skinned and fleshed the hide, then salted it. After drying for several days I scraped the salt off and put the hide in a bucket full of denatured alcohol and glycerin based dishwashing soap.
I let the hide soak for a couple of days, then took it out and started pulling on the hide. I was told that this breaks it down. When it dries, soak it some more and keep pulling and stretching. This is very hard on the hands. After I did this for many hours I put it back in the solution, let it soak overnight and did it again the next day.
I let it dry and the result is a preserved, hair on hide that looks good on the wall.