Can I put it in the tumbler to clean it?

Yes

Thank you.

If this gets any tighter the corners ain’t gonna hold.

Please keep posting your progress on this project.

I will be following this too..
I've always wanted a summer coat deer hide tanned. Only way I believe I can get one here is from road kill. I've never hit a deer and most ones I've seen hit been splattered or ones on side road gone green..
I do have a winter hide tanned hair on done years ago. Scraped and dried hide of a doe I shot rolled it up sent it to Moyle.


Mac

What happened to the legs and flanks?

Didn’t need them for this project so I cut them off.

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Roughed it up a little bit, hoping to get some brain on it Thursday evening so I can work it Friday.

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I got my 5 hides stretched to dry out over the weekend, unfortunately the weather will freeze them first. Might be spring time before I work on them again.

Unless I can convince my wife to let me tan in the basement.

Let us know how it goes. lol

I have typically stretched them scraped with hair on to dry and then kept them til the weather warms up. I was hoping to get them bucked and dehaired this year then freeze them until spring.

My wife thinks the process smells bad. I think it smells natural.

I think it was PikeRiver that mentioned adding liquid Ivory soap to help with the smell.

an old friend of mine (who is no longer with us) use to tell me how he use the powdered soap (I believe he was talking about the old tide or something like that) to tan his hides. He use to some beautiful deer skins. he build a huge tumbler, that he would put pieces of 2x4's and old shoes in to help break the skins.

K snow , I flesh my hides , salt and drain them , then salt heavily and store rolled up in sealed 5 gal buckets . I've stored them for up to close to a year like this with excellent results . I find that if I dry them first the rest of the process is much more difficult and then end result is not as good . These were stored this way and ready to buck .

If you add a "smoke skirt" to your brain solution it will make it last longer and have a nice smokey smell. A smoke Skirt is a piece of blue jean material that I used to pipe smoke into the hide, keeping the hide itself away from the pipe. This is more for hair off brain solutions. When I do "braintan" hair on I sometimes use lecithin mixed with lard.

I have never done this before. Is there a step by step in the archives somewhere or would one of you be willing to add it somewhere?

A neatsfoot oil ,Ivory soap hot water combination works very well in place of brain . Smells better too lol