|
Bear
May 7, 2009 8:38:24 GMT -5
Post by joanne2 on May 7, 2009 8:38:24 GMT -5
Just began another black bear yesterday. Have it soaking in the pickle now. It was in some guys freezer for two years. I used the powerwasher yesterday to flesh the main part that I had thawed out and then needed to skin the skull and paws from it then powerwash those areas that I'd missed.. and also needed to remove the ear cartilage. I also simmered the skull for awhile and power washed that. Seems I could have simmered for awhile longer but I hate to as the bones and teeth can loosen. Don't happen to have any dermestid beetles.. least not that I am aware of!.. might be a GOOD thing! ;D I'm looking forward to using the John Rineharts Tanning Cream on this neutralized shaven and pickled bear. I will be really happy to see this big bear with the white chest patches preserved. Will share pics soon. Still need to do some more work on the skull. It's got some old stained looking teeth!
|
|
|
Bear
May 7, 2009 11:09:48 GMT -5
Post by fishinmusician on May 7, 2009 11:09:48 GMT -5
Hi Joanne,
I'll be curious to see how the John Rineharts Tanning Cream works out. I have a bear in the freezer that's been in there for two years, too. Once school gets out, I should get that one done. Keep us posted!! Dave
|
|
|
Bear
May 8, 2009 7:09:37 GMT -5
Post by joanne2 on May 8, 2009 7:09:37 GMT -5
Hi Dave, Don't be afraid to tackle your bear. It's dead! Biggest issues for you will be slippage and thinning. So have you got a shop vac and a bench grinder? Alum really helps too with animal skins that might have the slightest tendency to slip. Tightens the hair right up. Dakota machine fleshers are better than bench grinders for do it yourselfer's, but I'm a bonified DIY anyway! alum can be hard to wash out of the fur too.. (the downside to alum) but it's easier to wash the alum out of the fur than to put the hair back on! The biggest thing, is to keep the fur around the face (especially around the ears, Dave) just as dry as you can keep it (when you will need to be physically handling it) for the part of the job that requires removing the ear cartilage. It must be removed. Not so hard with an exacto knife. I could hardly do this without the shop vac. It helps immensely. I was blowing the hair in on the hair side while using my shop vac to blow the fur and I had the razor knife in my hand paring on these ears that were blown up.. bulbuous style.. kinda neat. I just bought a Dakota Pro for thinning these skins, but as you can see it's not mounted to anything yet, so I wasn't about to try it out first on someone elses bear skin! I'm slightly intimidated by the looks of it. I used the bench grinder on this bear instead and although it took for freaking EVER to thin, I got the head neck and even the foot pads down to the 'true skin'. That means for sure that the repickling will help to open up the skin and the paint on tan will penetrate deeply and every part of my bear skin will be truly tanned and easy to manipulate dry. Don't yet have the tumbler but I'm working on being more of a fur tanner. all takes time and effort.. and money.. all of which I never seem to have enough of. Well good for you, school is almost out! I'll then have 3 kids running circles around me wanting to go to the river! Oops, forgot about my daughter and grandson.. wow.. 5 KIDS! Well if I can keep them and their grubby little mitts away from my bench grinder and machine flesher I'll be doing well! Maybe I can get them all staking framed deerskins all day? (just wishfull thinking there). Maybe this advice will help you out as I'm sure that bear seems daunting to you. Just remember the basics and you'll do fine. You could practice using the bench grinder on some raccoon skin necks or something to get a feel for it first. You just don't want to grind off the hair roots or you'll have a hairless spot! but better to thin it than not to thin it or it just will not get tanned at all. Or pickled fully.. so.. good luck.. hope this helps!
|
|
|
Bear
May 8, 2009 21:03:35 GMT -5
Post by fishinmusician on May 8, 2009 21:03:35 GMT -5
Hey Joanne, I'm not afraid of bears, remember I harvest these myself! Yeah the last bear started slipping hair so I thought I would dry scrape it and braintan it to see what that would look like. I need to get that one in the brains, too one of these days. It might be kind of cool looking. No for me, it just finding time. Seems like the hair-on stuff is just slower for me. But I'm having fun tanning and selling a few! Looks like a nice fleshing machine you got there. I'm sure it will be better than the grinder. Keep us posted how it all works out. Later...
Dave
|
|
|
Bear
May 12, 2009 5:37:21 GMT -5
Post by joanne2 on May 12, 2009 5:37:21 GMT -5
And now comes the softening stage..hopefully. The skin on the head and neck still feels quick significantly thicker so hmmn may need to get going on the machine flesher installation and get to shaving off some fine slices of bear skin! I painted on the tan and left it set for most of one day, over night and part of the next and used my powerwasher to wash that fur side. I'm never using alum again.. with the bear skin I could see tiny whitish color granules in the fur and the fur did seem duller..but alas the fur definitely is set on it so I'm not leary at all about using a powerwasher to wash the hair side a bit and this machine has some power to the oscillating sprayer I might add too. anyway I literally poured some dishsoap right into the fur and managed to clean the fur side quite a bit. actually I hit the flesh side first and going from the tail to the head washed off the excess paint on tan. I then proceeded with the hair side and set to drying and wiping up the fur side with an old towel. I also forgot to mention using a portion of a bottle of hair conditioner..OH..and also forgot to mention adding the fur to the washer again.. the machine washer to run it through the spin cycle a couple of times..then it was time to allow the skin to soak up some sun and wind.. so right now it's still mostly damp on the head, neck shoulders and upper arms and the lower half and snout are all feeling quiet dry.. the snout could be a bit softer than it is. I may dampen it later.. hard to tell at this point yet. The skin on a bear doesn't ever soften up like brain tanned buckskin, pliable for sure but it lacks the soft and suppleness of a totally plumped out skin. Anyway this is how it's looking. Thought I'd share. So far so good. You can see where some of the fur was pulling through in this pic and I think that had I used the washer or if someone was fleshing this bear with bar and beam, you would want to flesh from tail to head to prevent this. The bear taken early in the fall are more prone to having hair roots right there on their thin skins as well so these bear are much easier to tan, soften, stake, etc. with the aid of taxidermy chemicals formulated to penetrate right into the fibers. Staking brain tan bear is quite an easy way to end up with a lot more pull through hair. Don't ask ;-). Quite a good size bear. I love the white on it's chest. Shame to kill these, however the hunters did eat the meat from these animals that were slain. Anyway all good to try to preserve their skins the best way possible. Beautiful creature.
|
|
|
Bear
May 12, 2009 11:32:51 GMT -5
Post by fishinmusician on May 12, 2009 11:32:51 GMT -5
Lookin' good Joanne!!!
Dave
|
|
|
Bear
May 12, 2009 11:34:50 GMT -5
Post by Buckskin Billy on May 12, 2009 11:34:50 GMT -5
thats looking good. wish we had more bears around these parts so we could hunt them
|
|
|
Bear
May 12, 2009 20:43:36 GMT -5
Post by two bit on May 12, 2009 20:43:36 GMT -5
yes its looking very well
|
|
|
Bear
May 13, 2009 7:06:38 GMT -5
Post by joanne2 on May 13, 2009 7:06:38 GMT -5
Thanks Guys.
|
|
|
Bear
May 17, 2009 12:59:59 GMT -5
Post by caretaker on May 17, 2009 12:59:59 GMT -5
Don`t know what`s goin on but I`m keepin an eye on it.
|
|
|
Bear
May 17, 2009 16:25:56 GMT -5
Post by longtrail on May 17, 2009 16:25:56 GMT -5
Phew,,,, glad I'm not in on that one! I just had a thought about a bear skin vest I made once. I had just gotten into making items from fur, so thought I'd made a pretty good deal when I got my hands on a nice black bear hide. So I got busy cutting and sewing and pretty soon I had a beautiful bear hide vest, fully lined with red wool. I was living in NW Oregon at the time, and soon found that when I wore the vest on a damp day, which face it, is usually 354 days out of the year in the NW, the bear skin absorbed moisture from the hair, to the point that the hide was actually soggy !!!! Obviously a hell of a lot of salt had been used in the tanning process! So...just something to watch for. Hey Gf, did you ever tan just the hide of that bear? How did it come out? lt
|
|