and if I have a problem with them staying focused long enough to break them all in for me. I just tell em im gonna take em fishing when their done!

works every time. win win for me

What's the solution in the tub? If it's an acid pickle I'd be worried it would react with the concrete block and be hard to maintain the right pH.

lol they might not wanna fish with arms that tired ha. good luck tho, keep us posted

Id try to explain but would only mess It up. here are the videos that go through it all step by step by sam woods outdoors


https://youtu.be/iqcZEBS79gY
https://youtu.be/HXetYb9cj9I
https://youtu.be/monBRuXj2Hk
https://youtu.be/ziL6yLiPbjI

all but the beaver are in the acid bath. the beaver didn't want to rehydrate like everything else did. so they are about 3 hours behind the rest. I threw everything in the pot this time around just to see if they would all react the same way. op, beaver, fox, yote, and coon for the equivalent of 36 coon size skins. ill pull em out in 5 days

also,

for those of you like me. you can use white vinager to lower PH and baking soda to raise PH. he dosnt hit very hard on that in his videos. but he does mention it. you just have to be paying close attention. and you will need to know it!

Very interesting...will be watching for your final results. Tom

they are out of the pickle, neutralized, and in the Tan

I lost a fox in the pickle. don't know if it was the hide itself (it had a green belly), if I rung it out to hard, or if it was the solution? I noticed last year that coon and yote were quite durable when handling them as far as ringing them out etc... but muskrat were not! I pulled the fur out of a rat last year doing so. but when I finished tanning it. the fur that was left was good to go. im starting to think that the thinner skinned critters need to be handled a little differently? such as fox, op and rat?

I will be done with this load around this time tmrw. then it will be breaking and oiling time

im gonna tell ya now that ya don't wanna do a 14 hour shift then have to sort through 36 wet skins!

wow

lol no that makes for a long day.

Don

I've been using Rittle's products for years and have tanned dozens and dozens of pelts with nothing but great results.

Did you know you can leave pelts in the safety acid almost indefinitely? I "forgot" about a few beaver when the bucket they were in got shoved under a bench in the fur shed. I found them over a year later, rinsed and tanned as normal and they turned out great.

Make sure you stir the hides around every day (or twice a day) so the solution penetrates everything.

ive been hitting them every 12 hours while in the pickle. I plan on hitting them every 4 hours while in tan

will be pulling them out in 9 hours!



for you that tan a lot of hides: last year after I pulled them from the tan solution I put them in another solution with dish soap to give them one final cleaning and degreasing before I started the drying/oiling/breaking process. it worked as far as I could tell except for them smelling like dawn dish soap when they dried. so this year I got some sentless dish soap and hair conditioner. so I will do two additional bathes. one final cleaning then a conditioning.

any advice or opinions on that?

I have used laundry fabric softner with good results along with a just bit of 20mule borax for a nice final clean and degrease. Remember the stuff is concentrated so a little goes along way. Looking forward to seeing the finished product. Thanks for the thread!

I'm watching this closely. I have some grey foxes to tan. Might tan more if these go well.

Don

I used a wire wheel last year but may switch over to sand paper. I don't have an air compressor and had to use a friends. but this looks as if it will work just as well. I also like the idea of leave in conditioner

https://youtu.be/9IJ7mWe7o9c

alright

for the 1st run I threw everything that was junk in the tube (wasn't gonna go to auction anyway due to defects etc...) and im glad I did it that way. I lost everything that was thin skinned. 2 fox, 3 op, and 4 small coon all went south on me in the tan. one of the fox went south in the pickle. everything else looks like it come out on top and in good condition. wont know until I start to break them for sure. from here on out I wont try to do different species at the same time. ill keep coon with coon, rat with rat, etc... unless Im doing a small load that I can control easier.

but here they are all oiled up:

beaver seemed to do the best, then coon, yote, op, and fox failed miserably

another thing I could have messed up on that could have ruined the ones that didn't make it was that I may have had to much skin in the solutions. I just eye balled the two coon per gallon of water and used my best guess when it came to the beaver and yote