Has anyone ever heard of tanning a hide (for use as a leather belt) with feces and urine? I know a hide can be tanned with brains.

In one of my workshops in my MFA work at the University of Southern Maine, I read a story (fiction) in which a character says his belt was tanned with feces and urine. I'm supposed to critique this story.

What would be in feces that would tan a hide?

Jim

Well, I found this on Wiki:

Formerly, tanning was considered a noxious or "odoriferous trade" and relegated to the outskirts of town, amongst the poor. Indeed, tanning by ancient methods is so foul smelling that tanneries are still isolated from those towns today where the old methods are used. Skins typically arrived at the tannery dried stiff and dirty with soil and gore. First, the ancient tanners would soak the skins in water to clean and soften them. Then they would pound and scour the skin to remove any remaining flesh and fat. Hair was removed by either soaking the skin in urine,[2] painting it with an alkaline lime mixture, or simply allowing the skin to putrefy for several months then dipping it in a salt solution. After the hair was loosened, the tanners scraped it off with a knife. Once the hair was removed, the tanners would "bate" (soften) the material by pounding dung into the skin, or soaking the skin in a solution of animal brains. Bating was a fermentative process which relied on enzymes produced by bacteria found in the dung. Among the kinds of dung commonly used were those of dogs or pigeons.[3]

Learn something every day.

Jim

[/b]allowing the skin to putrefy for several months[b] I don't think their would be anything left to tan.

Leather and fur was, and kinda is still, very valuable. Hard to imagine it being treated like that. I suspect the same thing often used to treat trap rust, tannic acid, was a lot more common. Salt. A very important chemical then as as well. Some of that wiki stuff is questionable at best.

I question that part too.

Jim

I remember seeing a show years ago. Third world country. Dirt hole full of water under a pigeon roost. Guys were actually IN the water pounding goat(?) hides into leather, using the pigeon crap enzymes. It was pretty gross.

Poultry manure is used in a step during the bark tanning process. Just read through it in one of the Books of Buckskinning.

Bating is not tanning. It's one step used in some forms of tanning. It's still used today, they just use chemical bates. I've used chicken poop for bating deer hides before. It has a loosening effect on the hide, making it soften easier, but it's a bacteria, so you can overdo it. I'm guessing on the belt leather, it could well just be rawhide that was softened by the bating, but most processes have some soft of oil added.
I've heard of them just laying a cowhide in the corral for awhile and letting the hooves and manure work on it. Cow hide is pretty tough material when not broken down by modern chemicals.

https://youtu.be/WmN_2VXY23M

Here it is. NatGeo in Morocco.

How about I shat tan a hide and make you a hat.
A shat hat.

James will believe this but not the bible. Weird eh! LOL

I sent some skins out one time and the place did a crappy job.

Does that count?

Pete

Perfect ! for the guys that have it for brains !

Prenup isn't something just thought up by later day lawyers. In the Babylonian Talmud it tells that if a woman married a tanner and couldn't stand him because of his stench, then she had 6 months to divorce him and retrieve her dowry in full. The thought was she might not have known how bad he smelled or he might have lied to her and told her he was a perfume maker and the bad smell was only temporary. If she waited longer than 6 months she could still get a divorce but would have to forfeit all the dowry.

From what I read in that era dog excrement was widely used. The tanner was despised but supplied a product everyone needed and used.

A tanner was not considered a good catch for a woman. Perfume makers and sellers of spice was where the money was. But we know we all marry for love and not money, lol.

sounds like the process the dems use to determine their Presidential candidate...just sayin'.

if poop works,you should be able to tan about all the coyotes west of the Mississippi with your current supply.

People sold the family urine to tanning shops kind of where the term pizz poor comes from.

I prefer coppertone when I tan, but to each his own.