last year I did a few skins just to try my hand at it and to see if the product worked. I was quite impressed with the way it all turned out. so here we go: got 36 skins in the hydration and should finished and broke in 10 days from now. ive got 5 more EZ-100 Tanning kits in the mail and will try to tan 36 skins every ten days till im done with what I have. im kind of nervous doing so many at one time. but there is no turning back now.

Good luck , and don't forget to show us the finished product please thank you.

What a dissapointment, I thought you were talking about girls!

Nice whistle pigs in there...

hummmmmmm wondering how that would work with some rabbit pelts

I got some white rabbit skins im gonna try my hand at. I bought them of someone to use as bait/attractant for k9. didn't use them all. so, why not tan em?

Those blocks are going to be tough to soften !

my wife said the same thing. only i thought she was serious when she said it!

lol, I felt kind of dumb when I tried to explain to her what they were for.

Im very interested to see how these turn out. Take some pictures of how you break the hides, I'd like to see that!

Thanks, and I hope they turn out well for you!

i raise silver fox rabbits and want to tan some fur for trying to make mittens and such.

Not sure, but when I was tanning my own pelts. If you added to many to the solution at one time. You would drop the pH to much and you would not get final product you were looking for.

Maybe this was a different method.

What are you going to do with all the pelts once you have finished tanning them? Just curious.

Sounds like you've got a lot to do. 36 skins every 10 days until they are done.......

Good Luck.

wissmiss

I want a couple throws for myself and wife. maybe a comforter or two? we did a little experimentation with bleaching coon this winter that turned out ok. other than all that. made a few hats last year and I told about 15 little boys I would make them all one. so that will be a must before winter. I got to find a way to turn them into $$$$

I got a couple shops that will try to turn them into cash for me. may stick em on ebay as well or try and find a true furrier that wants them all after im done.

trampledbyturtle

ill keep the ph thing in mind when I get to that tmrw. ill spread them out across a few different containers

thank you!

wissmiss

yea, I have a lot. at least a lot to someone like myself. I sent 60 something to nafa that are still there. figure ill try to make the other 100 or so do somthing

I am anxious to see the end result also.

breaking

last year I used a wire wheel produced good results. this year I'm gonna try a couple different methods. one was told to me here on Tman : put the hide back on board, stretch, and break while doing so. the other I saw on a tv show called mountain men I do believe. the older gent that lives way out in the middle of God's country with his wife. I saw him using what looked to be a wire that was fasthend to a pole at top and bottom. he just seemed to be working the hide on the wire by pulling it from one side to the other.

I'm gonna try all three and/or a combination of all three to see what each produces

brian i use what the old man used on mtn men... its cable. and it works real good, atleast for me anyhow. youll have some sore arms after breakin all those hides lol.

someone mentioned roping as well. but I don't know what that is and when I asked I got no reply back on it.

this is where 4 kids come into play!

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

last year it was a little warmer and I was able to start breaking pretty quick. not so much this time around with the somewhat colder themps we are having. may take another 4 days for them to dry enough to start breaking. so I brought a few in the house to help em out a bit.

What was the pH in your pickle?

these two are a few of the black ones I planned on making wall hangers out of and I couldn't wait to see em finished. the others are just defect coon that I plan on making hats out of for some nephews of mine. I I havnt started the all black coon I caught yet. didn't wanna run a risk of ruining it with inexpirence on this load. it will be in the next batch though!

right around a 1 when I started. but that don't mean it stayed there once I added the coon in. I only tested ph twice. once before I put coon in pickle and once before tan. I really just wanted to see how idiot proof this stuff really is this time around. last year I wanted to learn and see quality of final product. now I wanna see how far I can push it and how many I can do at one time.

Last batch I did, I did a pile of various critters. I stirred the barrel every hour for the first 6 hours and tested the pH each time. Salt is also very important in the pickle to avoid slipping.

thanks


next batch will be for the money. so I will bring all attention to detail to the front of the line. I am now confident that I can do large amounts of skin and come out with quality product. If I can do this and this load with very little attention to what was going on. it will be no issue next time

Great post!!!!


Thank you Brian!!!

i would start breaking them a little even if they are still damp. thats what i do anyhow. not a serious breaking, but start stretchin those fibers out.

Yea

Ill start em on the cable

well,

here is pretty much the finished product. ill start breaking them all today and will just take my time on that part while on my work cycle and ill start another batch today that will be at this same point by the time im off my work cycle. I will scale it down a bit though. I pushed the envelope on the product this time just to see what it was capable of. and I have to say that if I can do it anyone can do it! I pretty much took a bunch of dry skin out of a freezer and threw them in a tub. only check the PH twice and pay little to no other attention to them outside stiring occasionally. ill do 20 this time around but in two separate tubs. ill check PH more often and stir more often this time around.


this is one of the ones I brought in last night to help speed the drying process up a little. its still a little damp butits dry enough to start using wire wheel on or sand paper. I did spray a little leave in conditioner in the fur. that stuff is really thick. a little was a little to much I think. now the fur feels greasy. I hope that wars off as it dries out. other than all that. this is it. ill post a few more pics of one that I get broke in all the way and then a few pics of the different things we make out of them this summer.

have fun all!

Looks pretty nice. I'm thinking this needs in the archives.

I am thinking the same thing ...lol Tom