I am still practicing on my tanning... items finished yesterday and today... The one mink is unusual, the one on the right, has practally no long dark guard hair. I also appears to be a young one, maybe this years. It was a raod kill a friend of mine found 2 days ago. The one one left was caught about 3 weeks ago. The muskrats were a couple out of the lot of 13 that I got from my friend a couple weeks ago.

When you watch on YouTube or read about these guys doing tanning and then try and do it from they tell you... you find how much they don't tell you. It about like someone tell you how to perform brain surgey... they say... You cut open the skull and cut out the tumor. The fail to tell you about 300 other things to get to that point. Now I am finding out!







Garry-

Nice job.

Looks Awesome

Can we see the leather side? More especially on the muskrats.

Here you go HobbieTrapper...



Any Questions ????


Garry-

Look great Actor. You alum tanning?

No I am usingcitric acid and other ingrediants from TruBond... degreasers, and tanning solutions

Garry-

Thank you Actor and yes I do. They look a lot like mine. The leather is soft but not “limp.”

Are those “limp”? lol

Good job Actor!!

Those muskrats look nice. It sounds like they were stretched/dried? How did you tan them? I've done several rats, and I just don't have much luck. The hide doesn't get soft and when I stretch them I've had several rip. It may be that they were dried to long before I tanned them. I've done coon, beaver, deer, mink and possum and all turn out great. Muskrats not so much. Yours look great.

DadN3Boyz
I have had people thare a lot smarter than I am that tell me, the way to tell if they come out right cross a wide spanse. They can go from being soft and limp to firm, but not hard and crackle. Mine come out soft bellies but from the old "Leather Backs" do not get real soft but they are pliable. I hope that makes sense.

They are about 85 to 90% dry and then the stretching finishes out the process. I still get a tear in a throat now and then. It seams to me like they get to dry before they are stretched, but I keep working on it and hope someday I can get it right.

HobbieTrapper
Yes you discrbed it pretty close... the bellies are soft on most all of them but still have soft not quite so, when it comes to the backs.

Garry-

I like Trubond products.

The suppleness in commercial tanned furs come from machines we don’t have at home, not from the tanning agents. You can get them decent, but its tough and not usually worth the effort. And thin skins like rats are easy to tear. Tanneries have things like 10’ tumblers that just aren’t practical for home tanners. They also have highly skilled shavers and that helps a lot too.

Attempting to break a skin too soon or too late is what takes the stretch out of the home tanners leather when everything else is done correctly.This causes what is called "rattly leather".Insufficient stuffing of the leather with lube is another.

Nice work, but I'm probably like 95% of the people that came to check out this thread when I saw the title "Tanning Photos." Figured I'd be seeing a beach . . . some white sand . . . some copper skin . . . Instead, I get a couple muskrats. Oh well, carry on.

Well done. I’d like to give tanning a go but it seems like there r a lot of methods. I’m unsure what route to go.

That is always the big question in everyone's mind.At least those that have thought about it very much. I went through several systems, but wasn't getting the finished product that I wanted.

After trying battery acid with several methods, I decided I needed to get something a little safer. After researching it and talking to a lot of different people, I decided Citric Acid would be about as safe as you can get. Then I talked to more people about the citric acid and finally came to a conclusion that it was about as good as any you could use and still get a good product. I really wanted more than just the product... I wanted consistancy in getting that product and I wanted to have the control to do so. That is why I am writing down the steps in pretty much of a researching way, so I can pass it on to others.I wrote down all of the steps I go through to tan a skin... then I am breaking that down into the actual work that is performed. This is not something that you can start after breakfast and finish before bedtime. I takes days, 6 or 7. Leaving the hide in the pickel solution is 72 hrs. or longer.

I have gone through over 50 pounds of salt. Which you can buy at Tractor Supply for around $6 or $7 dollars. You need to have containers of various sizes and they must all need to be plasic. You don't want any containers that are metal, and a way to to keep you hides under the solution. For this I use plastic milk jugs and some type of plastic lid.

If you want to skin, flesh and stretch your hides and then later tan them them. You can do that. Then you need to be able to rehydrate to the point of being fresh. There are steps to degrease your hides, especially like raccoons and beaver.

Anyway, I am trying to figure out all of the varibles and have spent a lot of time with email. I am tearing apart the instructions I got from the company that I am getting my products from. Their info is good by not practical for someone that don't already know what is going on. So I question them about the confusion and they give me straight answers that I apply and put them in a workable format.

Garry-