I have heard of people putting up predators (fox,coyote,fisher,bobcats)fur side out and not turning them. does this only work on split stretchers? I only have solid wood. Do you have to do anything special like wipe down with borax? If this is a bad idea pleae explain.

You start out with the skin side out. After roughly 24 hours when the leather is not tacky anymore you turn them fur side out. Place a belly wedge between the fur and board to help in removing it.

First you put them on FLESH side out and let them dry awhile, time will depend on heat, humidity, etc. of where your drying them out, best to keep an eye on them, once they become dry to the touch, turn them fur side out and put them back on the stretcher to finish drying out.

Usually id put mine on flesh side out in the evening after skinning / scrapping, then turn them the next morning before leaving out again.

Beat ya' to it Bama boy

I completly realize you place them flesh side out first and turn them fur side out. What I am asking is i have heard of many people skipping that step. such as steve wood on his video for bobcats. I am looking to see if i can implemt that. I am in northern country so hummity is not a problem.

After skinning and fleshing properly, dust whole hide with borax and then put on stretcher. I use split stretchers but have buddy that uses solid stretchers with belly boards. When throroughly dry he takes belly board out and then bangs stretcher nose first on concrete floor and then slides fur off, works fine. The borax keeps hide from sticking to wood stretcher plus you dont get hair slippage around ears BUT if you skin ears out properly you wont have that problem. Borax doesnt hurt hide for tanning either. When you have hide off stretcher you can snap a couple of times and excess powder comes off....

these lean bobcats out here are a lot different than most furs,most the time you can turn them in min`s

I have done coyote and fox fur side out. Never on a solid board but when I used to do ranch fox we used boards with grooves routered in them and blew air into them.

I am using wire, and 20 mule team borax. Flesh the animal and then rub borax into the leather side. Especially aorund the front legs and ears rub it in good. I skin out some of the cartilidge on the ears prior to this. I then put a mink stretcher or comparable board up the belly to allow airflow. No problems with slippage and buyer does not care about the borax. With wire sometimes the pelt might stick up around the face/neck area. I just knock the nose hard onto the concrete floor and can knock it loose.

After you get the pelt on the stretcher brush the fur backwards and stand it up as straight as possible. Let it "set" that way into the leather. With the roots of the fur set in that position in the cured leather, the fur will always look fuller later when being graded.

ttt

any other opinons

Great idea
It's real timesaver too.
If you hang the furs upside down to dry they seem to fluff up a little better also.

This is Phil Brown's setup. He once gave me permission to post this so hopefully he still is OK with it. The reason I kept it is because it is one of the neatest fur out drying setups I have seen. The ones I have used in the past, took up entire walls with foxes sticking out on racks horizontally. Phil has gone vertical with his. Most of these types of operations use wooden boards with air grooves routed into them, and a small tube comes out of the air source and sticks into the mouth area of the pelt to be dried. The board is usually covered with a paper sleeve of some sort. Air flows thorughout the area between the pelt and the board.

What I like about Phils setup is that it takes up less room space, as the pelts are vertical. I am betting he has a squirrel cage fan blowing into a sealed type box, which then is attached to the PVC pipe you see. A plastic tube is then installed every so many inches, and that is where the stretched pelt hangs. Air pressure is blowing through the tube from the air source and the stretched animal pelt is hung at the tube and the tube inersted into the mouthhole on the stretcher. Air then starts to flow through drying it. I am betting that Phils unused tubes are pinched off with something, to save the airflow from escaping.

If you were going to do a lot of pelts fur out, this is the way to do it. I do not have the volume to deal with so have not set anything up, as I am only doing 3 to 6 at a time.

Cool setup.