i have ben tanning pelts sence i was 6 with my grandfather. i have used this orange stuff for years now with mixed results. this time i rehidrated for a night salted and scraped evryday until i got the sattle off then scraped all the oil i could out by runing a knife along it. then pickled for 2 day. next day i let them soke in bakeing soda for 3 hours then dawn blue dish soap bath and scrub. then aplied warm HTF then fliped them flesh on flesh. next morning i fliped inside out to finish drying and hung infront of fan it took 2 days to completly dry as i steched and pulled the pelts. i am completly satisfide with the results. soft as any tannery pelt i have ever handled. hear are some photos.

Nice work. I was wondering if anyone's been doing any home tanning this month.

thank you! i have a whole pile of beaver and yotes and fox that need tanned. i will probaly keep posting

Looks great. I’d like to home tan someday

Looks fantastic! Look forward to more posts. Followed Bocos last tanning post, I'll be jumping in this year myself. Take care and good job

My experiences with the orange bottle have fallen distinctly second to the oak tan and the alum tan that I've done in the past. I listen to all the things you did, maybe I just haven't given it a chance to work under ideal conditions.

I've been working on a bird of a different feather this month. Or in my case, a fish of a different leather.

Got my first fish hide of the year about a month ago, a large buffalo-carp female. That one turned out great, used home-mix of alum, and then discovered the greatest addition to fish-hide treatment I could find, by accident. WD-40! Wow, I'd never use it on a fur, but it works great on the unique skin of a fish, makes it more flexible and gives it a better feel. Now I've been trying to get similar results from three large female carp, and I'd forgotten how difficult it is to get the oil out of fish hide. So I have one absolutely beautiful carp hide, alum-treated, and as I started the final trim and sanded the inner surface, I foundit still had oil everywhere. With salmon, gar, and carp leather, if you take the hide and pull the length of it, head to tail, it's stronger than any other leather. But in every other way, it's not so easy to handle; you can't really push or scrub or scrape with any force or you'll punch through along the grain of the scales. So it's not possible to scrape the oil out of the hide. Has to be chemical degreaser. I'm starting to think it might be time to try the Northwestern Indian technique of soaking in aged urine. Because, you know, I'm sure my daughter won't mind if I keep a bottle of aging urine around ... For now, back into the laundry detergent it goes.

So, fur versus fish leather is strange territory, but do any of you guys with a lot of experience have any ideas on a really good animal hide degreaser?

Also, yes, it's definitely time to finish up the furs in my freezer! It's so blasted hot outside, what else can I do? Raccoon, opposum, and a few small critters my friends handed me to work on. It'll be nice to leave the complications of the fish behind and get back to fur.

thanks for comenting i am interested in how you tan a fish now maybe you should do a thread! i personly like to scrape my pelts realy good. with the long soakings in the pickle i think it realy opens up the pores and alows for a good crape with a beaver type knife and a good washing with dawn blue dish soap. the leather is almost elastic like when i do it that way. plus i realy work hard to get that last layer off or what most people call the saddle. good luck

Naphtha gas.You will see the gobs of liquid fat at the bottom of the jar in a day or two.
Do it after the hide has been in the pickle for a couple days or after the pickle and before the tan.
Make sure you work outdoors with naphtha.