Got a question about pickling and neutralizing. I am.going to use oxalic acid for pickling. I also plan on oxalic acid for tanning. Burch's book states I need to neutralize the hides between pickling and tanning. I am not seeing the sense in neutralizing after pickling with oxalic acid if I am going to tan with oxalic acid. Anyone want to comment on my thinking?

Im not a master tanner, but you need to stop the acid and neutralize it or else your hair will slip. In theory you could skin, flesh and tan and completely skip the pickling but my own experiments have shown it doesnt work that great.

What methods have you used to tan?

Oxalic is not a tanning agent. Purely for pickling purposes only. Theres some places that says it is but those places are clueless. Without neutralizing, your hides will suffer from acid rot and fall apart, or dry out and crack. Some tanning agents wont get taken up into the fibers if the pH of the hide isnt raised enough(varies by agent)

We will see. Burchs book says it is. I am going to follow his directions and find out.

Some the stuff he appears to talk about in that book is a bit dodgey so good luck

On oxalid acid: https://www.taxidermy.net/threads/173155/

Btw the link my my signature has a search for taxidermy.net which has a lot of great information on all kinds of tanning process

I have done brain tanning, orange bottle tanning, I have the supplies for pro tanning that taxis use, but I am experimenting with using sea water that has high concentration of salt in it for pickling. The hardest part in my opinion is breaking the leather after it's tanned to get it supple soft, I have no idea how they do it at a commercial tannery with just physical means. I know they have the drum, but other than that not much idea.

Even the Dead Sea doesn't the proper salinity for a pickle.

Probably not, I thought it worthy of trying though. Whats your opinion on urine?

It stinks

I am going to be making a breaking bench. I don't think it has to be elaborate.

Hi folks! I read the link sniper posted. My take on things, when it comes to making an informed decision on the source of information, is it is much harder and labor intensive to write,edit, and publish a book than to post in social media. I successfully used alum tanning which is an acid tan. I assume I will achieve similar success with oxalic acid which is also an acid tan. I am not telling anyone what to believe or that they are more or less correct or incorrect. I am a critical consumer of information and I know there is more than one way to skin a cat. I am getting ready to take my raccoon and squirrel skins out of the pickle. I will soon have results and will post the results here. Concerning the post I was directed to: it stated oxalic acid puts off toxic fumes. This is correct: when the acid is burned as in combusted. I researched this to see if oxalic acid released fumes when mixed with water. Only when burned.

Oxalic is one of the easier acids to deal with, citric being the easiest. Fornic is some nasty stuff and needs PPE to use. Krowtann is basically just formic acid with some additives if you try that route.

So not super happy with oxalic acid end product. Going back to alum. Good thing I only wasted squirrel skins. Probably going to make boot liners out of them.

How did you end up using it?

After neutralizing it I stretched rhe squirrels on boards, rubbed some soap in while still wet, then broke them as they dried. Not soft.

Did you roll up the skins leather in and let the lube "sweat" into the skin for a day or two before stretching?
Unless you have a kicker,you have to get the fibres stuffed by letting it sweat in over time before letting the skins dry.

I did not. Not at all. I rubbed the soap in right after I putthe wet skins on the stretcher. Think rolling them up and letting the soap sweat into the leather would have made a difference,

Yes it is imperative that the fibres be fully stuffed with lube.
If not you wont get stretchy leather-it will be what is called "rattly" leather.