I made all my own mink, muskrats and fox and fisher boards from fence slats that they sell at home Depot. Used my buddies planer and traced out boards from FHA dimensions. Get three muskrat boards from one slat or one fox board. Can't remember how many mink boards I got out of one slat. These are cedar boards. While not as soft as basswood I don't break a sweat or toil using pushpins.

Must have meant his stepdad.

I have made all my wood stretchers. We have a lot of Basswood in this area and I am surrounded by Amish and saw mills.

This is what I usually do. You have to pick through a whole stack to find the clear ones and some pieces are harder than others.

I cut and plane white pine. It's even softer than basswood. Bought some of those and like the white pine better. Loblolly pine is too hard. JMO.

He is talking about his Dad’s planer The planer broke.

That is correct.

Some white pine is really soft, but some of it is pretty hard too.

With current fur prices for coons, rats, mink, grinners and fox and yotes there may well be plenty of used forms and wedges available. If just starting out used wire forms are workable as well.

Bryce

Cedar is like that too some is nice and soft and some is hard.

I just picked up some split wolf, coyote & otter boards from Mel Stocking. Bass wood. I got my boss to make me an otter board last year to the FHA dimensions. Not sure what he use but I’m bending 5/8 pins and they sometimes fell out after boarding……fire wood now.
I’ve got wire fox & muskrat stretchers and that’s all those things are, fur stretchers.
Got Mel to sign a board, going to make some kinda display with a wolf or coyote.
I was warned about Mel. Went there at 9AM expecting to talk for an hour or so, and I left at 2PM…lol. He’s got a story about Leon, and a million others, haha. He’s still cranking out orders for supply stores at his age, he’s heading to Barrhead Ab, for the ATA convention, hopefully see him in Sioux….

Split boards are a poor choice for otter.Great for wolf,Cats and fox I prefer solid boards but split are ok as long as you use them right.Proper way to use a split board is open the board slightly then put the skin on and pin it out.Big mistake to pin the pelt then pull the board open with force.
Wire is OK for rats,wood is better to gain a size.I wouldnt use wire on anything else.unless I was just going to tan them later

Just the yote & wolf are splits. There’s a line where he marked the max width. I’ve seen wolf on splits that looked like it was on surf board…lol. Apparently 20+ years ago they wanted width over length?
I’m putting a package together for a local kid who just got his trappers course and I don’t even wanna give him the wire stretchers….lol. I’ll probably keep a few rat ones and sell the rest.