Pennsylvania Game News - October 2012 - 15

AFTER FLESHING the clean skin can be stretched and left to dry to make rawhide.

and still can be used for everything from drumheads to ropes and bindings to snowshoe webbing. I’ve even cut thin lace from it and woven it together, wet, to form seat bottoms on my camp chairs. When it dries it tightens and becomes very sturdy. If you don’t have the time to complete the tanning, you can leave the hide in the rawhide state and come back to it later. As long as it’s kept dry, rawhide will keep for years. To continue the tanning, though, I now put the skin in a soap solution. This isn’t necessary and wasn’t done in the old days, but I like to clean the hide after fleshing. Fels Naptha soap is a good choice if you can find it. It comes in a bar form, so I grate it into shavings and mix it with boiling water in a plastic bucket. I’ve also had good results with Dawn dish detergent, and I’m sure there are many other soaps that will work. The soap solution just cleans the hide, but it does nothing to aid in the tanning itself. The solution should be lukewarm when you add the hide. I usually soak the hide for two or three days, stirring it occasionally to mix the soap and rotate the hide. After removing the hide from the solution it needs to go back to the beam to remove the excess soap solution. Just go over the hide as if you were scraping off the hair. This will not only squeeze out the soapy water, but also allow you to remove more epidermis you may have missed. Stretching and breaking the fibers of the hide is an essential step in any tanning
OCTOBER 2012

method. As long as the hide has moisture it will be limber and pliable, but if the fibers are not broken, as the hide dries it will turn out about as limber as a piece of corrugated cardboard. To stretch a hide you’ll need a frame. It can be made from large saplings, 2x4s or PVC. One measuring 63 by 63 inches will be large enough. Put screws or nails in about every four inches across the top of the frame. Just leave the heads stick out so you can hang the hide from them. Your hide should have a relatively straight edge where the tail used to be. With a narrow blade knife or awl punch holes along this edge and hang the hide off the nails. From here I go to the front legs and stretch them with bungee cords toward the bottom corners of the frame. Rope or rawhide lace was used in the old days, and I’ve done some tanning using those, but the bungee cords are a lot faster. Now go along the sides and bottom of the hide, attaching bungee cords every three or four inches to achieve a uniform tension across. Many times I’ll trim the edges that have wrinkles between the bungee with a sharp knife. Stretching is a lot of extra work but there is no doubt the result is a larger, more even and all around better quality hide. As the hide dries it shrinks, and the fibers draw together, making it stiff. Because of this the skin needs to periodically be taken off the stretcher and “broke down.” This is done by pulling it across a solid object in a variety of directions. Some tanners will clamp a dull axe head in a vice and rub the hide across it. Many years ago my dad constructed a specific tool
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Pennsylvania Game News - October 2012

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