I want to tan a couple of coon hides so my sister can make hats for her grandsons. I'll be using the Pro Tan tanning formula that i already have on hand. The beaver hides i used it on didn't come out very soft and i used neatsfoot oil on them which left them smelling oily and didn't do much to soften the hide. I'm thinking these coon hides will be thinner and easier to break and i'm also trying to do a thorough job of fleshing the hides. But i also want to use a good softening oil. I looked in a taxidermy catalog and the oils there said to use with alum based formulas. What would be a good brand name of tanning oil to work into a chrome tanned hide?

Plinker

Plinker, first off, Neat's Foot Oil is NOT a tanning oil. It's a leather FINISHING oil. Secondly, a "soft" tan really has little to do with the oil as much as it has to do with "breaking" the hide. (You break a hide by dragging it, hair side up, across a dull edge or a dull pointed stick. With smaller hides, your stick or your dull edge must be smaller to work in those smaller areas.) When you're finished tanning, pour the oil (I use ProTal from Van Dykes, but several suppliers carry alternatives. If you can't find any close, go to the Dollar Store and buy several bottles of their cheap hand lotion. It will work exactly the same. I like the hand lotion as it's a "water soluble oil" that cleans up easily)on the leather side of your fur. Rub it into the leather until it puddles. Wipe off the excess and AGGRESSIVELY break your hide. When you've "broken" every square inch of the hide, turn it over and pour more oil on. Rub it in and repeat the breaking process. As long as the hide absorbs the oil, keep repeating it. When the hide finally puddles when you try to rub it in, wipe it off and tumble your hide in sawdust once more to remove residual oils from the leather AND from the hair where it may have seeped to. You hide should be super soft and your hats can be cut easily from them.

Well gee whiz, if Dollar Store hand lotion will work then i'll just go one better and use Equate hand lotion from Walmart! That is great news, i have plenty of that on hand. I'm going to break the skin aggressively. I don't want my littl nephews running around with rigor mortis coon caps!

I don't have a tumbling drum, do you think a cement mixer would work? Thanks for telling me about using the hand lotion, that's clever and i can't wait to try it. Thanks again, and i really mean it.

Plinker

If you don't have a tumbler, use a heavy duty plastic bag with about a gallon of HARDWOOD sawdust. Drop your tanned hide in and shake until dried. Then blow the sawdust out with a compressor.

If you are going to chew the hides to soften them,probably be best to do so before adding the hand lotion.