we`ve been skinning ours lately. seems nobody wants lard or cracklins anymore. but well as i remember the water has to be about 145 degrees (have to look for my old thermometer to see for sure) and there is a narrow margin on the temp, if it`s not hot enough the hog won`t scald and if it`s to hot you will set the hair then you`ve almost got to shave them. we`ve scalded some that would go 450 or more without any problem. before you drop him in the scalding pan dip a cupfull of hot water out and poor down inside his ear if he doesn`t jump he`ll be ok. but we have put 1 or two in that that have been killed for several minutes and they come back out giving us nasty burns from all the splashing water but never had one react that didn`t react to the water in his ear.add a little hard wood ash from the fire to the water to help to loosen some hair. leave him in rolling him back and forth with ropes wrapped around each end untill the hair starts to come off good. we used to have regular scrapers made for it but the best thing we found was old canning jar lids , the ones that were made out of zinc 4 of us could do 1 in about 20 min. or so. the main thing is be carefull not to put him in to soon and don`t get the water to hot. my grandaddy would run his hand through the water very quickly and if it burned on the third time the water was the right temp and he could judge it very well. actually i beleave we got better scalds when he done that than when we used the thermometer, but he had many years of practice to. with all that said it`s quicker and easier to skin. and you really don`t lose all that much.