Skinning Animals with Tanning in Mind (Video)

Main
#1

Steven Edholm has a great video on skinning goats for tanning. Skinning without score marks is the Holy Grail for tanners because score marks ruin great hides. Skinners at butcher shops could usually care less about tanning, so they cut for speed. As Steven mentions, if you get into tanning you’ll eventually want to skin hides yourself.

2 Likes
#2

Oh, and I thought I would mention that Steven didn’t get to an important step after skinning: preserving the hide. I mention it because it has to be done RIGHT AWAY. There are a few ways to preserve hides: wet salting, freezing, or drying. Pickling is another method, but I don’t care for this one.

  1. Wet salting: Lay the hide flesh up on a board or pallet, with the board/pallet tipped up on one side. Then salt about 1/4" throughout the hide. Overnight the salt with pull out blood/moisture from the hide and run down the tipped up hide. Salt again if needed. Store in a plastic trashcan, five gallon bucket, etc.

  2. Freeze: just put the hide in a bag and freeze it. Works great for small hides. Not so great for large hides, unless you have lots of freezer room somehow.

  3. Dry: On a large piece of plywood or pallet, nail the hide stretched out to dry. You can also use a knife to pull small holes around the hide, tie a string to pegs connecting to each hole, and stretch the hide out to dry. The heat will scorch and burn the hide so be careful drying hides in the Summer, especially fatty hides.

Pros and cons to each method. Freezing is the best but takes up freezer space better used for food. Wet salting requires dealing with salt which kills plants/soil. Drying is the best, but supposedly doesn’t work well for buckskin (that’s not my experience though). Freeze drying outside in the Fall is probably the best method, I think, as long as you can keep hide bugs away.

#3

We are finally to a place that we are harvesting animals regularly, so far it’s mostly snowshoe hare, but these are so valuable. Thank you for taking the time to write these.

1 Like
#4

You’re welcome. Did I mention this fur tanning how-to?http://www.braintan.com/articles/furs/george1.html

1 Like