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Post by longtrail on Sept 8, 2008 11:07:35 GMT -5
For those of you who are interested................ I've been an arrogant, bad girl again, comparing our method to the bucking method. Here is a photo of a long, long, long, time bucker's, supposedly "prestretched hide before it goes into the smoker, then is "crammed, his description, into the brain solution before softening. To us, it has the appearance of a rawhide. ***image removed by request---Grizz***Here is a photo of an elk we pre-stretched, and was ready to go into the smoker, and when we brained it, it felt like it literally melted into the brain solution. You can see in places our pre-stretched elk is actually soft already, note soft folds. We don't have a photo of his finished elk, but here is the photo of ours, the same elk shown above. That took six days from start to finish, when we softened it, it took four hours to dry and soften with only 1 hour and 45 minutes hands on work, if you can even call it work. and yes, under ideal weather conditions, that of warm, sunny and a breeze. We were told that a beginner probably couldn't use our method and have a hide come out like this, and we sure realize that, and always suggest first time tanners begin with a doe hide, but the other, person has been doing hides as long as us, and compare the above photos. I stated it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which hide is going to be easier to soften. Every picture tells a story don't it? I was told on another site I shouldn't be bragging about our nice hides and the ease in which they were tanned....duh. No apology.
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Post by paskinner on Sept 8, 2008 13:06:37 GMT -5
To be fair to Billy, you might want to mention that he did not half soften that hide twice before softening. Of course it looks like rawhide, it was just pulled tight on the frame not worked. And the reason he could soften it only once might have something to do with the fact that the fibers were already opened up by that there poisen we tan with... ;D Whatever works for ya!
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Post by longtrail on Sept 8, 2008 14:58:57 GMT -5
Thats right. Anyone who wants can vist Paleoplanet and read his tutorial themselves. Would only make ours look better. I wasn't trying to slight him in anyway. The photos do that. Packed up with the rest have ya? I think that the fact our hides are soft even half way through the process says alot. Thats what the prestretching is for. Nice try. pup Go mark your territory.
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Post by joanne2 on Sept 8, 2008 16:43:38 GMT -5
and you can sure say that again, LT. Beautiful elkskin. Lucky person gets that one!!!! You can really tan some hides AND kick some ass. PLEASE remind me to NEVER p you off! LOL Keep up the great work you guys
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Post by caretaker on Sept 8, 2008 16:46:44 GMT -5
please keep this civil. Yes I have read post on the other site. I have not tried either method so do not have an opinion. I ask only that all discussion and comments be kept respectable and civil. I like to read about how to do things and gain knowledge even if I never get to put the knowledge to use. I doubt I will do either becouse of 5 bypass and 5 heartattacks. I don`t have the stamina and strength anymore. That does not lessen my intrest.
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Post by paskinner on Sept 8, 2008 18:54:23 GMT -5
On the bright side, it appears we have had a lot more guests here lately. I'll try to be good. I have to admit to enjoying a good debate now and again, but I do try to keep it civil. I'm not sure what "packed up with the rest" means, since I've yet to see anyone on the other forum do anything but defend themselves in as civil way.
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Post by longtrail on Sept 8, 2008 19:31:38 GMT -5
You know what Caretaker, the method we are using now, takes hardly any stamina or strength. What gives you the idea that tanning hides is so difficult?
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Post by longtrail on Sept 8, 2008 19:35:09 GMT -5
Paulette, I'm not pissed off. Just a tiny bit irritated. :-)
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Post by paskinner on Sept 8, 2008 20:03:13 GMT -5
Graining hides is work. I've had a few guys here doing it for the first time and a couple of them were strong, too, they all have sweat running down their face and a hard time of it the first time they grain a hide. The bull elk I scraped today took a lot of stamina too.
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Post by chuck on Sept 8, 2008 23:32:24 GMT -5
Longtrail i noticed you stirred up a few folks on the planet but it makes for good reading. Too bad if someone is not open to an easier way, they can just do it the hard way. I am all for easier myself.
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Post by joanne2 on Sept 9, 2008 8:50:02 GMT -5
Longtrail- Yeah I know. I was just kidding ;-).. I am looking forward to making your personal acquintance pretty SOON. I've been where you are disagreeing with many over the use of lyes for tanning hides and I am sure that had I just come across your method sooner that I would have gotten quite a lot further with my hide tanning and also.. most importantly I could have avoided a lot of frustration. Far as bucking hides go. I don't really see that it does anything to the hides and skins that can't be done without bucking them so just an added step in there to use the lye. There is just SO MUCH to be aware of when bucking hides that it can also cause plenty of complications that well you probably would need to get out your pH meters to understand just how your skin will respond to further tanning attempts.. FORGET IT.. that is NOT my idea of enjoyment. The funniest part is that usually if your hides and skins fail to come soft even after using these lyes and rinsing.. is that most likely a good smoking and rebrain and softening 'completes' the task.. well the hell with that I want to be assured that eventually I will come to having super great superbly softened hides 100% of the time and I will place my money on the Dinsmores Video. Be nice too if Melvin Beattie would someday come up with another video as most of the time he does NOT buck his hides. That tells me something too. Perhaps he would if he had a better water source.. but then perhaps he will also be looking at the Dinsmores new upcoming video himself. I know he will most definately employ the use of smoke too.. so I think the Dinsmore's are really cranking out some excellent hides. The proof is in the pictures and if Vicki has to get up in front of a fairly large audience and yell from the rooftops to say that their hides are great and tanning them is pretty simple and easy. I think that we all being connected should take heed and NOTICE and give them a large amount of respect cause frankly they been at this a long while!!!
Caretaker.. Listen to V. I myself have only wetscraped one BULL elk and it was a doozy too.. I found out that if I used a narrower beam.. and I did use a real heavy fleshing bar. The lawnmower blade scraper would be one that could work extremely sufficiently.. the heavier the bar and also a waist beam on a good heavy neck like that. I was given a tip by another long time tanner to soak the elks neck in warmish hottish water for a short while.. and to scrape the elevated grain.. (NO BUCK) while the skin was still warm.. and damned if it didn't scrape noticeably better.. a huge improvement over the wrong size beam and a grainy neck that wasn't engorged with water enough to scrape easily. So there are little tips and secrets and tweaks that people have shared out there that can make ALL the difference in the world you just need to know WHO to listen to and get off your duffs and DO IT. So not so easy.. really we're all just human and make mistakes, hopefully we learn from them. DO take the initiative to at least give it a try cause I think if a 50 y/o woman can do it, the chances of a guy in your shape doing it is better than none. It is a good idea to try to at least get some exercise.. really some of these little deerskins, doe skins, young buck skins are certainly no effort at all to grain, so what PA is relating here is just primarily not very true. I find young deers that some of these kids get in the early fall to scrape off really well without even have soaked them IN ANYTHING prior to graining them .. you can almost scrape the grain off these moist skins with a butter knife, it's so simple and easy.. And BIGGEST thing to remember is that you are only limited by your imagination, what you can and cannot do. AND furthermore you will NEVER know unless you TRY. I think if you do ever get the gumption to tan a little deerskin, you will really be satisfied with what you end up with! and on a final note.. it will be around long after you are gone! Right now I am stashing away more rawhide than my children may ever live to soften! LOL.... OKAY enough soapbox lecturing! Get to work folks!.. okay.. well I'll get to work.. soon as I post my lousy first attempts at quillworking..well they ain't too bad..but they ain't too good either. so I'll post them anyhow and hopefully someday someone will give it a try cause if I can do it.. so can YOU' all! :-) my 14 cts
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Post by joanne2 on Sept 9, 2008 11:54:30 GMT -5
you don't want to try the short soak of the elks neck in the warmish hottish water too much with the same necks as the neck of even Bull elk are loosely fibered creatures and your intent isn't to weaken the context of the skin but to remove the grain. I KNOW that I was only able to remove the hair and grain from the freshly skinned bull elk because of learning this tip. The switch from a six inch wide beam to a 4" beam made just as much of a difference.. These animals skins are only as hard to tan and soften as you make them.
"tan with brains!"
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Post by longtrail on Sept 9, 2008 12:21:54 GMT -5
Thank you Chuck and Paulette. I want to state that is isn't my intention to kick ass here. Except maybe to offer a "kickass way of tanning hides" But thanks anyway Pauletter :-) As far as wandering into an enemy camp, ( just an expression) I'm always going to have pistols drawn incase I need them. :-) And I'm not refering to this site. So now that the obvious explinations are over..... lets get down to the art of tanning hides.
FLESHING ~ Please note that we flesh side to side. We soak the hides first unless the hide is fresh. Put the hide on the beam side ways, rather than lengthwise. It seems like it takes a bit longer, but in actual time it doesnt. Scraping is scraping and the same amount of surface is fleshed.
Why do we do this? Because it opens the fibers up in the very first step! When the fibers are opened up from being fleshed sideways, rather than tightened together from scraping neck to butt, cause thats the way the fibers run, and scraping neck to butt only tightens them together. By fleshing like we do, and the fibers are opened up, more water is absorbed when you soak the hide in preperation to dehair and the dehairing is markably easier. Sure, it takes some effort, to dehair, but not nearly as much as before. If the neck give you a hard time Caretaker , cut it off, we use to cut the thick necks off before some of our new found techniques were being used by us. You won't loose much square footage, and perhaps as you scrape more hides, you will find the job easier, and can then decide if you want to tackle the neck. As far as if the fleshing is easier on direction or the other, it doesn't seem to make a diff, but the dehairing is definately easier when the hide is fleshed side to side. If you don't think side to side in several of our steps makes a difference, hang a fleshed, dehaired and prebrained hide lengthwise on a line and see what happens when it drys. The hide will become very narrow and tight. Hang a hide, with the same steps done to it. sideways on a line to dry, and the hide opens up and fibers relax. Hey, try it for yourself. Not too long ago, a young guy from down south wrote to us and stated that he could see a big difference in how his hides were coming out just from hangning them side to side on the line to dry. And these were hides that had already been bucked before he decided to use out method. A hide is supple when it is fresh or salted, with our method we do what we can to see it stays as supple as possible until it is finished. When we hang our hides on the line, after they are prebrained, they dry, but you will actually see them dry white in places, what does the white show? That the fibers are apart, and it is easy to just pull the hide side to side when it is dry like that and see the fibers open up even more. Try that with a hide thats been hung lengthwise to dry. We hung the hides lengthways for years, in our VHS tape we hung them lengthwise. Sideways works better. Try it.
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Post by paskinner on Sept 9, 2008 13:15:52 GMT -5
As far as elk go, I get a lot of elk hides that are skinned clear to the ears. In fact, they leave the ears on the hide. I have tanned them with almost all the neck on, but it just depends on the hide. If it's being too much of a pain, it really isn't worth it to me to fight with it. Someone hobby tanning may feel differently.
I've never really paid much attention to which way I flesh. May try one sideways. I like to play with different small variations just to keep things interesting. I'm easily bored, I guess. I grain from neck to tail because that's what I learned from Joe Dinsmore. No joke, I started doing it that way after watching the video and have never seen a reason to change. Graining is like any job, the first few times it seems tough, after you gain expericance, you go "peice of cake, nothing to it", because you learn to do it with less effort. Same thing was true of every factory job I ever did.
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Post by longtrail on Sept 9, 2008 14:09:41 GMT -5
Smoked and ready to go. The actual color of the hide is somewhere between these two photos. Our client wanted a light smoke.
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