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Post by GW on Dec 12, 2008 18:09:27 GMT -5
This statement is from another baord......
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Post by beaudro on Dec 12, 2008 20:19:26 GMT -5
Greywolf, this guy posted that on historical trekking forum, i've been arguing with him for three days now. I have no idea how to get a point across to him.
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Post by Buckskin Billy on Dec 12, 2008 23:27:58 GMT -5
i thought the purpose of the brains was to lubricate the fibers. you then pull or stretch it to keep the glue from setting up. then the smoke was really the tanning process. is there truth to this? i would like to know as well. what have i been missing during the brain procedure, that fully tans the hide. it takes little smoke to finish a hide. i have smoked hides before just for a couple of minuets. washed them and allowed them to dry outside and they be white, but have the effects from the smoke.
i know of no one who goes hunting or fighting in white clothing. a indian basically made his living fighting for his land and hunting. i can't see that being done in white buckskins, reguardless of how its tanned
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Post by paskinner on Dec 12, 2008 23:56:06 GMT -5
I just saw the post on historical trekking and was debating about saying something. I don't think the guy has a clue, really, but what do I know?
Billy, IMO, you have it right. Brains do not tan a hide. I don't know of anyone who tans for a living who would say differently, but I don't know them all.
With most forms of tanning, if you get a hide soaking wet and let it dry, the leather will stiffen to some extent. To what extent probably depends on how much oil and how much of the tanning element remains in the hide.
I haven't lived in braintan like some, here, and I'm open to learning...do ya'll (we say you'uns here) grease up your moccosins good? It doesn't take a lot of soaking for even smoked hide to stiffen if it's just allowed to get wet, dry, wet, dry and not worked.
"Think about it, when you brain tan and you take your hide out of the brain solution does it turn to rawhide when it dries?"
Yes, if you just let it dry. I will agree that it is no longer true rawhide, it is oiled rawhide and as Longtrail shows in some of her pics, it will likely be a bit more flexable than unbrained hide.
Well, I'm going hunting tomorrow, so Night all!
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Post by joanne2 on Dec 13, 2008 2:33:23 GMT -5
"Many native articles of clothing were made of unsmoked leather, did they run inside when it started to rain?" Sure they probably did have sense enough to come in out of the rain, lol. You have to remember that the indians that weren't smoking their hides or skins lived in a very smoky environment.. (just like my house!).. between the woodstove and cigarrette smokers, any skins that I have softened that are hanging around ARE very much absorbing 'smoke' so in essence.. these skins in which appear to be unsmoked ARE in fact smoked.. and not really UN smoked like you may assume from appearances.. Appearances are very decieving. I know this very much from first hand experience.. some of the first skins I softened, I left 'hanging around' the house. One had a lot of grain left on and so I resoaked the skin and removed the grain the following summer..only to realize that what I was making was very much like camo material.. hmmn.. magine that! Where the grain was removed the skin was amazingly WHITE.. and well unsmoked.. don't ask me about whether or not there was a need for reoiling, I'm sure there was but it would NEVER have made any kind of USEFUL rawhide as in RAWHIDE.... I'm sure there was but not to a huge extent.. If you wash your braintan clothes very often you will find that there is a need to re'brain' your smoked brain tanned hides. 'TO keep them 'soft' ;-) FWIW.. I don't do this for a living. I just do it for the fun of it. ;D These skins here make particularly lousy RAWHIDE.. but they've never been oiled. They're quite pliable but not opened up for smoking either.. there are many states of rawhide the skins in my shed here are a long way from the state that one might imagine 'rawhide' in the sense that most people imagine 'rawhide'. Even the skins in my fleshed pile here do not have the slimy glues that you would like to see in rawhide.. for that, you need hand fleshed and dehaired skins.. preferrably unbucked for the best of slimiest and glueyest rawhide. JMO Again.. I may not do this for a living OR wear buckskin leather day in and day out but I do have a very good clue about HIDE GLUE! This is a picture of some dried coyote skin glue that I raked out of the yard after the snow melted.. this was in the place that I'd powerwashed the coyote skins. Amazing isn't it? Freeze dried hide glue.. suppose one could just add a wee bit of water to a bunch of this and have some hide glue??
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Post by paskinner on Dec 15, 2008 23:37:07 GMT -5
In regards to natives wearing white hides, I've always wondered about that. Seems like the natural thing to do would be to scrape the hide fresh, stretch it out and get to softening when you could. I bet a lot of stretched hides were stored in smoky places and got pre smoked to some degree or another, whether deliberately or otherwise.
Also, if you wash your buckskins, sooner or later you end up with almost white clothes. Here is a quote from Matt Mcmahon, from the book "Traditional Clothing of the Native Americans" At the time he wrote it, Matt had been living in the woods for several years, making his living from primitive skills
" It doesn't matter how dark the smoke color is, it always fades after washing until it is white. White is my least favorite color for working clothes! Few people ever reach this stage with buckskin as they don't wash and wear it enough. You may manage to keep color in a pouch or hat or that twice a year worn 'costume,' but if you wear buckskin every day and wash it once a week, that's 52 washings a year. Even after 20 washes your skins are close to white. Also if you really wear them, you get stains from soil, campfire and whatever and a stiff brush scrubbing is the only way to get those stains out. As you scrub you wash away the smoke color. In other words, the harder you work the quicker they fade! Of course you can always re-smoke for looks but there is no need for function and re-smoking is add maintenance that you don't need!"
Maybe the tribes who wore white hides really did smoke them, they just liked to keep their clothes clean?
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Post by GW on Dec 16, 2008 4:46:34 GMT -5
Thanks for the replies and yep it was that guy on the HT board. I haven't tanned since the early 1980's after suffereing a severe neck/back injury but the comments here and Matt's and Melvin Beattie's comments over on BT verify what I remember. I still use quite a bit of BT in my work and wear it (when I can afford to LOL!) and when wetted it will stiffen a bit until reworked.
Another note regarding "white" buckskin - In one of my many period documentation sources there is mention of a tribe on the northern plains getting caught in a rainstorm. They had rubbed a clay onto their gear which he;ped protect the hide from getting wet. After the rain stopped they beat their clothes to remove the hardened clay and re-applied it. I'm betting the clay was bentonite which is as far as I know white......... Between that white clay and the fact that on the northern plains smoking often turns the hides more of a gray than a brown their sking may well have been "white"
Here's that source: Alexander Henry (Elliott Coues, ed.) NEW LIGHT ON THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE GREATER NORTHWEST: THE MANUSCRIPT JOURNALS OF ALEXANDER HENRY AND DAVID THOMPSON, 2 Vols. (Minneapolis: Ross & Haines, 1965): Vol. I, p. 371 [July 24, 1806, 20 or 30 miles south of Big Hidatsa Village, traveling with a trading party of 500 Hidatsas & Mandans going to visit a village of Cheyennes:] "At seven o'clock [A.M.], just as the vanguard had gained the summit of one of those high, rocky hills, it began to rain hard. Our old general ordered a halt, and his eldest son went the rounds repeating the order. All covered themselves as well as they could, some with their robes, others with their saddle equipments [i.e., with their saddle pads, usually half a buffalo robe, called in the Cree dialect "apishamore", or "apishamo"---MC]; but many of the young men, who had neither robes nor saddles, and were dressed in their fineries, which would have been spoiled if wet, preferred to undress entirely, and gave their friends their things to keep from the rain. p.395 [July 26th, on the homeward journey] During the night we had a terrible rainstorm of thunder, lightning, and torrents of rain,which ceased at sunrise, but not until everyone of us was wet to the skin; the men's robes and leggings, and the women's shifts were in a sad state. Soon after the rain ceased a tremendous pelting and beating commenced, which at a distance might have been taken for several hundred men threshing wheat. This operation over, all the leather articles were well rubbed with white clay, which I am told, prevents them from getting stiff or hard in drying; for this purpose they always carry some of this clay with them."
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Post by Cody ( The Patriot ) on Dec 16, 2008 9:13:24 GMT -5
I think maybe that yaehoos hides got some smoke on them if you know what I mean
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