I was thinking about making a few muskrat stretchers out of some scrap wood and some old raccoon stretchers that I don't use anymore so I looked on FHAs website and printed off the dimensions. I made one to keep as a template so I can just trace it onto the boards so that I don't have to remeasure each one. I also want to mark the lengths on it so that I how how many of what sizes I have to sell at the end of the season. After I cut it all out it just seemed like it was really narrow to me. When I compared it to the 45+ wire stretchers it was narrower than all my wire stretchers. The widest part at the bottom is supposed to 6.5" at the bottom according to FHA and I measured my wire ones and they are all real close to 8" wide at the bottom. That extra width is probably costing me an extra length size especially on the larger rats. I looked at NAFA's old pelt handling manual and their width is the same as FHAs and I looked at few other places and theirs are the same.

I am wondering if anyone has looked into whether or not the fur buyers take this into consideration when they are buying. Any fur buyers out there, I would love to hear you opinions. I won't call him out on here but I watched my buyer grade mine from this year and had went strictly off of the length and didn't move any up because of them being stretched wide. Does anyone know if FHA uses the same laser measuring system the NAFA supposedly use to figure out the square inches and sizes them off of that?

I am thinking that I may need to cut my wire stretchers so that I can get them closer to the "standard" width. Let me know your opinions or any tricks you used to do this.

Schmattz

I just squeeze my wire ones together a good bit. I like the wood better, but the wire comes in handy when you need more. Wood stretchers are definitely skinny compared to wire, but the wire dries fast. I always sent my furs to auction so I don’t know for sure if I got less for the wire stretched rats. I assume I did get a little bit less.

Here are the measurements for my extra large rat boards. My boards are 24" long.

Starting at the top. The first number Is the width of the board. The second number Is the distance measured from the nose down..

3" @ 2 "

5 1/2" @ 6"

6" @ 10"

6 1/4 " @ 14"

6 1/2" @ 18"

61/2" @ 24"

One sized board will fit most all of your rats. If your catching a few dinks you might want to scale those numbers down a bit.

A board that Is too wide In the nose and shoulders will cost you as much as 2" in length.

Beav,

Your sizes are actually wider than the FHA boards in the middle part of your board. Their sizes are:

3 1/4 @ 2
4 3/8 @ 4
5 1/4 @ 7
5 7/8 @ 12
6 1/2 @ 24

Their board tapers the entire length.

Truthfully I am not concerned about these small differences. The extra 1.5" that the wire ones are wider than what they should be and not getting compensated for it is what has me concerned.

Schmattz

The thing about wire stretchers Is they act like a spring and actually thin the hide as It dries. And a paper rat will cost you money.

Get those rats off the forms In 24 hours and you will improve the quality of those rats. Once that nose Is dry your good to go. Then pack them as tight as you can In cardboard boxes to keep them from drying any more. No need to freeze them.

Just judge the nose? I guess I have been doing it wrong all these years.

Not the wrong way but leaving the rats on the forms for to long Is going to cost you money when they get too DRY.

Take a over dried hide and It will lose weight and get papery. Take a hide that has been on the form for 24 hours or so and you have heavier hide that is nice and supple when handled.

It may not have as much effect on heavy eastern rats but those rats that grade CENTRAL need all the help you can give them.
I brought In over a 3000 rat hides that I caught In ND. These rats normally grade CENTRAL the grader asked me what I did to make most of them grade EASTERN and I told him what I did.

Do what ever trips your trigger but I know what works for me.

Just for the record, I reached out to Groenewold twice early two weeks ago thru their contact us on their website. I still have not received any response. I work long days that prohibit me from calling during work hours. I was curious what they use for widths. Thanks for The Beav chiming in but I understand how to dry a rat and that you are a wood guy. I am trying to get this information out there because I would assume most don't realize that there stretchers are wider than they need to be and it might be costing them money by costing them lengths.

Schmattz

Groney Is against wood. He say's that wood stretched rats are harder to bundle since when they dry they are thicker and don't stack as well. ROTFLMAO

He doesn't like wood because you get a better stretch which gives you a longer rat. Lets face It you can't make a rat any bigger then It actually Is but there are ways of stretching that rat to give the trapper a little advantage
when grading by size..

What Beav says is that you can’t make a rat bigger but you can make it smaller.

If you under stretch a pelt will it come out of the tannery at the "correct" size. that is, if I understretch an xxlarge beaver as a xlarge , could it come back from tanning at xxlarge?
Thereby giving the buyer an upgrade in size from what you sold him to what he got back from the tannery.

Pelts should be just pulled snug for drying.Just enough to take out any wrinkles.
Overstretching or understretching is not reccomended.

A pelt that is not stretched enough could have folds in the leather while drying.This can lead to hairslip when tanning.

Pelts coming back from a good tannery will have stretch in the leather.Because of this the tanned pelts will look considerably smaller than a stretched dried pelt.

Manufacturers will repair any defects in the tanned pelt and then block them to take out the excessive stretch from tanning.This also removes any puckers in the skin from the repair work,and the skin will be close to the size before tanning.

I'm not looking for a tutorial on stretching pelts, I'm looking for an answer to my question:

Could an understretched pelt come back as its' "correct" size.

I have heard from a source that they get back several pelts from the tannery that were "larger" than the lot size they were in. I'm just looking for verification of that statement.
Thanks

You actually got you answer. Stretch a beaver like a drum or loose. Or just lay it on the ground and salt it. Once it’s dressed it’s going to be whatever size it was. As Boco said once it’s blocked out for use that’s the size.
You can get docked for understretching and loose a size. You can also over stretch and loose a grade.
Part of the issue with rats from a buyers perspective is what is that size and grade of rats going to weigh. When selling rats to an end user a certain size should weigh a certain amount ( heavier is better) Groenwald’s videos about rats mainly focused on not over fleshing, leaving the saddle on etc.
Why do you all think that was...
And Beav while it is kinda funny, stacking rats that were put on wire is definitely easier than rats on wood!

Over the weekend I took out a muskrat from the freezer that I had saved to film a video of how I skin and flesh my rats and put it up on my youtube channel sometime over the summer. I put the rat onto the wood stretcher that I made from FHA's board sizes and it was about 17 1/4" long (to the sides of the board not the tail). So a 3XL rat. I took it off and put it onto my old wire stretcher that is closer if not over 8" wide at the bottom. The same rat only measured about 16" in length. A middle of the pack 2XL muskrat. The whole point of this thread was to point out that most of the old wire stretchers are to wide and are costing the trapper length. This proves it. What would I have lost for that one size? A dollar at least if not closer to $2 in this market. Spread that over 50, 100, or 300 rats like I had this year. The certainly adds up pretty quick. Obviously that length difference would be less on a smaller rat and the value difference would be a bit less per size. I will let you know when I post the video I took of this goes live on YouTube.

I agree that a tanned animal will go back to its natural size and shape. I haven't had to many hides tanned but the raccoon I had done that was a 6XL coon. It reverted back to its normal shape which was really wide and not long. It ended up close to twice the width of a drying board and maybe 4xl in length. It looks way more natural this way.

Schmattz

Yep. I switched to wood and immediately saw that I got more length. It takes me a bit longer to stretch a pelt on wood though. But I dont do the huge numbers so I've stayed with wood

For the record, I am not switching to wood. The only reason that I wanted a few wooden ones is that they are longer than the wire ones. I have a handful of rats this season that I couldn't get pulled tight because the hooks on the stretcher would be to the very bottom of the stretcher before the rat was tight even with the too wide wire stretchers that I have. I had to move the hooks up as much as an inch on the rat and then the tail part doesn't hang right. I wanted a few wood ones just for these giant sized rats. I am working on my plan for the wire stretchers I have. I am thinking about unhooking and straightening the bottom part of the stretchers. Make a wood block the has 2 holes drilled 6.5" apart to hold the correct width. By straightening the bottom wire, it might even gain me a little length on the stretchers as well.

Schmattz

I did something similar with raccoon stretchers. I cut the bottom of the stretcher off at the bend and used metal strapping from the hardware store and round head screws to attach the stretcher to the board of the correct width. It makes a longer stretcher with wood under the tail so it can be tacked out nice. I’ll see if I can find where I saw that. Worked great for coon.

http://www.wvtrappers.com/nafa_012139.pdf

Page 10.

I was thinking about trying to straighten the corners so that I could add the length from the bottom section to the sides to gain the length and still be able to use the hooks. With what the NAFA manual shows you would loose some of the length that the hooks could slide. Their method would work great for raccoon boards but not as well on muskrats stretchers that are already a bit short. I am going to do some testing on one and when I determine what I am going to do, I will post a pic or two and do a video for my youtube channel.

Schmattz