Salt tanning?

[Laird_M]

A friend's brother is a game keeper in the Highlands and he's geting me some pelts, fallow and muntjak.

I've found a 'salt tanning' method - anyone tried this?


Lay the full sheet of plywood on the floor to give you plenty of room to work around the area. Lay the fresh deer hide or skin on the top side of the plywood. Start the hide about a foot down from the top edge. You'll stand the plywood on edge once the deer hide is attached.

Attach the deer hide to the plywood by nailing it, hair side down, every three to four inches around the outer edge of the skin. The nails should be no closer than 3/8 inch from the skin's edge. Begin on one side of the hide, then move to the opposite side. Stretch the hide as tight as you can. As the skin dries, it will shrink and become tighter between the nails.

Stand the plywood on the 4-foot side and lean it against the wall, preferably in a garage to protect the hide from hungry animals and allow for some air movement across the drying hide. Pull the deerskin from the surface of the plywood so the hair does not rest against the wood.
Scrape and clean the hide of any remaining meat, using a sharp knife. You want a clean surface to remain on the inside of the deerskin.
Rub sea salt over all of the bare skin surface. Thoroughly work the sea salt into the skin. Do this every day for four or five days, depending on the environment the hide is kept in. The drier the room, the faster the drying will occur. Once the hide is completely dry, it should be stiff and have no odour of decay. Remove the skin from the plywood.
Roll the stiff deer hide up, then unroll and reroll it. This is the best way to work the deerskin to softness. The more you rub and roll the hide, the softer it will become. Some hair may fall out, but if the hide was fully cured with the sea salt, the hair pores should lock around each hair follicle. Continue to work the hide as much as needed.

[Ryan Ross]

That's not tanning. It's simply curing (drying) the hide. It produces what's called "raw hide".

To tan it, any of several additional processes must be conducted.

[Piper]

I used to do a fair bit of tanning in conjuction with my participation in Black Powder Rendezvous, and various reenactments. For the most part I made brain tanned buckskin, which probably isn't what your aiming for. I also did some hair on tanning with either a salt/acid or salt/alum "pickle". The tanning process is what softens and preserves the hide, allowing it to remain soft in use. I have a couple of deerskins that I tanned almost 20 years ago, that are still in great shape
The salting you're refering to only serves to preserve the hide until you can tend to it properly. If you have a large freezer (and a tolerant wife), you can skip the salting, and just freeze the hides once you have them completely fleshed. Just like any meat, you need to roll them compactly, and wrap them to be airtight to avoid freezer burn.
I did find that salting the hides tended to be hard on my scrapers when I was making buckskin, but since the hair on skins weren't scraped, it wasn't an issue with them. I found that using "20 mule team borax" in place of salt worked better for me. Any type of borax would work, but you can buy the detergent in any grocer's.

[Oberu]

Salt tanning will leave your pelt stiff to say the least and it would take you an eon to get it soft. I'd go with the brain tanning or the chemical equivalent and some elbow grease.

[Ryan Ross]

Salt tanning will leave your pelt stiff to say the least and it would take you an eon to get it soft. I'd go with the brain tanning or the chemical equivalent and some elbow grease.

To my knowledge, outside of brain tanning, most methods can (or even should) start with salt curing; again, I don't know that I've ever heard the term "salt tanning" used.

[piperdbh]

Where's Turpin? He'll know exactly what to do.