Post by paskinner on Jul 4, 2009 11:46:31 GMT -5
Since we were talking about the differences between hides on another thread, I thought I'd start a caribou post. I finally successfully softened one yesterday. Caribou are very different than either deer or elk. The best way I can describe it is that the surface of the hide under the grain is much tighter. When I tried to soften one before, I put it on the frame and found that it just didn't give. And since they are loaded with warble scars, if you push on the hide, you just pop open the scars.
A Canadian brain tanner told me he likes to cable them soft, so I tried that with this one, and it worked great. I had already brained and framed it months ago, and just re brained yesterday because I was just softening one deer and had room in the brain bucket. They aren't hard to soften by hand, but they don't come out quite like a deer, because of the tight surface. Other differences are that they seem to be a more uniform thinness than deer. They are very thin (at least the ones I have) and only a little thicker in the rump. You might as well forget membraning them, that just pops open scars, so expect to do a lot of sanding if you want to get rid of the membrane. I lost a couple caribou hides this year to bugs (they were dry but not salted when I got them) and now that I know how to soften them, I'm kinda upset about that, because I could have made a jacket or something.
I'm going to smoke it, then stretch it as much as possible on the frame
A Canadian brain tanner told me he likes to cable them soft, so I tried that with this one, and it worked great. I had already brained and framed it months ago, and just re brained yesterday because I was just softening one deer and had room in the brain bucket. They aren't hard to soften by hand, but they don't come out quite like a deer, because of the tight surface. Other differences are that they seem to be a more uniform thinness than deer. They are very thin (at least the ones I have) and only a little thicker in the rump. You might as well forget membraning them, that just pops open scars, so expect to do a lot of sanding if you want to get rid of the membrane. I lost a couple caribou hides this year to bugs (they were dry but not salted when I got them) and now that I know how to soften them, I'm kinda upset about that, because I could have made a jacket or something.
I'm going to smoke it, then stretch it as much as possible on the frame