It's been a while since you posted; have you done any work on the hide yet? Fleshing before freezing definitely makes life easier on the freezer, lol. The hide before fleshing can easily be 1/3rd larger than after. The hide after fleshing and dehairing is usually something you can fold up neatly and freeze in a sturdy gallon-size Ziploc bag. So I try to get both done before freezing, but it's honestly not going to affect the finished product either way.
I second the thought that a fleshing beam is going to be a better way to go than a pressure-washer, at least on your first go-round. You already know how to get good results with a fleshing beam, and deer hides are WAY easier to flesh than small mammals.
If you want any more tips and tricks on your first time tanning your own hide, hit me up; I've spent the past 10 years teaching myself how to tan furs and hides, using oak tannins, sumac tannins, and alum. I've also done a hybrid of sumac and alum tanning, which gave me a really incredible piece of leather that I mean to eventually make into a shirt or vest.
I've done one deer hide hair-on, and I have to say, it turned out AWESOME! As other people have said, they will shed forever; the hair structure is very different from furbearer hairs, so they break off at random. As I only use my hair-on deer hide for displays, the shedding doesn't cause any problems. Some day it'll probably look like a deer with mange, but that'll be a good long while from now.
One of these days, I'm going to try out brain-tanning; at this point I've only used a lecithin extract to try to simulate the lecithin in brains, and it would not work into the hide the way brains are supposed to.
Good luck!
Last edited by KT Wolf; 12/19/24 03:30 PM.
