buckskin question

[luv2farm]

As you all know, I have been gathering information and materials to try my hand at either some buckskin, or tanning with the skin on (not sure of the correct name). Hopefully, that will happen over Thanksgiving holiday. Thanks to all who have provided info. In my quest for knowledge, I have had several discussion with my brother, and evidently sparked his interest. (If he gets into this, I'll have help ). My question is this:

Brother has the hide of a deer that was killed 10 days ago. He skinned it out and laid it down on the concrete floor of his outbuilding. That's it. no salt, no fleshing. Just laid it out fur-down. Now it has been upper 20s - high 30s of the nights. anywhere between 50-70 during the days. Can this be "buck skinned" or is it to late?

[Oldcountryboy]

It probably can be salvaged, but it might stink purty bad by now. Place the hide over a fleshing pole, flesh side up, and flesh all meat and fat off. Then take you a 5 gallon bucket full of water and add a shovel full of hydrated lime and mix well. Place your scraped hide in the water and be sure the whole hide gets wet. Stir the mixture everyday for about 5 days or so. Check to see if the hair is slipping. When the hair starts slipping, your ready to dehair it. After scraping all the hair off, turn the hide over and rescrape the flesh side again. Then rinse it in water for several hours to delime it.

From here you can go two ways with the hide. You can leave it like it is and make Rawhide with it. Which is great for making knife sheaths, gun holsters, possible bags, etc. Or, you can remove the top layer of skin by scraping it away and turn the skin into suede leather for garments.

There's a book called "Deerskins into Buckskins" that you ought to get. It is really helpful in teaching you how to make leather from you skins.

It don't take but a few minutes to scrape meat and fat from a deer hide. As soon as you remove a deer hide, scrape and salt it down. Roll it up and stick it up in the rafters of your shed or barn. Position the hide so that it will drain fluids and it will keep for months till you get ready to turn it into a good buckskin to use.

[luv2farm]

OCB.....thanks!! And thanks for the book link as well.

[Badger]

The complete book of tanning skins and furs By James E. Churchill is an excellent book that can be found for about $10.00. He has specifics on many different furbearers and many different methods of tanning, fur on and buckskin, domestics as well like sheep, goat, pig, cow etc as well as cost efficient ways of aquiring the skins, making the tools, mixing the chems, where to buy the chems, etc. Well worth the purchase price for this book in my opinion.