I got hold of 9 sheepskins and have been trying to tan them using eggs and the help, expertise and encouragement of Dogwood from the forum (thanks Dogwood!!). I've only tanned rabbit pelts before, so I was surprised by how many complications I hit during the process. I thought it might help to share some of the things I've learned in case anyone else fancies trying their hand at some chamois leather. Basic process I followed is at the bottom of the post, things I learned were:
1) It's a good idea to wear waterproof trousers, worn outside your wellington boots, so that any fluid draining off the skins you're scraping goes onto the floor and not into your wellies nor all over your trousers.
2) Scraping hides, pulling nylon cord taught et c. is all very hard on the hands - it's a good idea to wear gardening gloves. If you have cuts or blisters, then wear surgical gloves underneath to try and keep the worst of the bacterial gloop from the skins out of your cuts. Make sure you have plenty of antiseptic cream in stock!
3) Sheep wool often has marker dye on it - this doesn't come off very easily at all, so best to tan skins with the least dye if you want to keep the wool on.
4) Sheep come in two types, wool sheep and hair sheep. Hair sheep make the best leather (wool-off).
5) Age makes a difference to the skin. Wool sheep more than 1 year old tend to get fatty globules in the junction layer of the skin and the layers delaminate. This means the grain scrapes off as well as the epidermis in patches, so you end up having to scrape the same amount off all over to get an even thickness of leather. The leather produced this way is very thin.
6) If you are in a very humid/wet part of the world, such as Cornwall, then the skins take much longer to dry. If you are tanning wool-on, so there is wet wool, the skins take even longer to dry. This means the wool will start to slip due to bacterial action after a few days. To prevent this, you will need to dry the skins more quickly somehow - put a heater on nearby or hang them over a fire or something. It's possible bark tanning would resolve this problem, since the tanning solution prevents bacterial action, but I haven't tried this yet. (thanks Dogwood for that advice!).
7) If you use a fire to speed up the drying of your sheepskin, you'll find that the dry wool insulates the skin from the heat. Once the wool is dry, you'll need to turn the skin around to dry the other side.
8) If a sheep has suffered an illness or some kind of stress (I had one that had been through a difficult lambing), they often lose patches of their wool. Watch for this if you're trying to make a woolly rug!
The basic process I followed was:
The skins were all frozen, so I soaked them overnight to defrost and soften the fleshy bits.
The following day, I scraped the flesh and membranes off the inside of the hides using half a telegraph pole as a scraping post and a straight sided but blunt metal blade to scrape with. (For rabbits, I just use a sharpened piece of wood, so using metal was already new to me!)
My scraping post can be seen below, where I was doing a wool-off hide.
The process now diverges depending on whether you're doing wool-on or making chamois leather:
Wool on
I washed the wool thoroughly with soap and tried to get rid of any marker dye/stains.
Wool off
I put the skin into a lye solution for a few days, until the wool started to slip.
Next, I removed the wool and scraped the epidermal layer off the skin - I did this in two stages, removing the wool first and keeping it aside as I want to use it for something else and then scraping the epidermal layer off. If I had difficulty scraping the epidermis off, I put it back in the lye solution a bit longer and then tried again.
Once scraped, I washed the skin to get rid of the awful stench. They really smell after a few days in lye solution!
Both wool-on and wool-off
I stretched the hides on a frame. To get an even tension, I used one piece of nylon string and wound it round and round through the frame and hide. The string went through the hide about every 5 inches around the edge. A leather needle helps with this.
I let the skin dry a bit, just enough so it's still tacky and will absorb more moisture when I added the tanning solution, but not too much or the solution runs over the top and refuses to soak in.
I made a batch of tanning solution. For each sheepskin, I used 4 eggs and 2 egg yolks with a dash of hot water to make the mixture hand-warm (thanks to Dogwood for the proportions). This was enough to rub into one sheep hide thoroughly. I tried to work as much of the solution into the hide as possible from the inside of the hide if wool-on, on both sides if wool-off.
I allowed the skin to dry - manipulating it as it dries to keep it soft. Once the skin started to change colour when I stretched it (the skins I have turn pale) I take them off the frame and start pulling them around a taught piece of baler's twine. (A pole or piece of cable would do instead). I keep working the skin until it is completely dry. Holding the wool-off skins up to the light helps show where the skin is still damp, as these areas let more light through.
Once the skins were dry and soft, I stored them inside the house to ensure they don't get damp again before I get a chance to smoke them.
1) It's a good idea to wear waterproof trousers, worn outside your wellington boots, so that any fluid draining off the skins you're scraping goes onto the floor and not into your wellies nor all over your trousers.
2) Scraping hides, pulling nylon cord taught et c. is all very hard on the hands - it's a good idea to wear gardening gloves. If you have cuts or blisters, then wear surgical gloves underneath to try and keep the worst of the bacterial gloop from the skins out of your cuts. Make sure you have plenty of antiseptic cream in stock!
3) Sheep wool often has marker dye on it - this doesn't come off very easily at all, so best to tan skins with the least dye if you want to keep the wool on.
4) Sheep come in two types, wool sheep and hair sheep. Hair sheep make the best leather (wool-off).
5) Age makes a difference to the skin. Wool sheep more than 1 year old tend to get fatty globules in the junction layer of the skin and the layers delaminate. This means the grain scrapes off as well as the epidermis in patches, so you end up having to scrape the same amount off all over to get an even thickness of leather. The leather produced this way is very thin.
6) If you are in a very humid/wet part of the world, such as Cornwall, then the skins take much longer to dry. If you are tanning wool-on, so there is wet wool, the skins take even longer to dry. This means the wool will start to slip due to bacterial action after a few days. To prevent this, you will need to dry the skins more quickly somehow - put a heater on nearby or hang them over a fire or something. It's possible bark tanning would resolve this problem, since the tanning solution prevents bacterial action, but I haven't tried this yet. (thanks Dogwood for that advice!).
7) If you use a fire to speed up the drying of your sheepskin, you'll find that the dry wool insulates the skin from the heat. Once the wool is dry, you'll need to turn the skin around to dry the other side.
8) If a sheep has suffered an illness or some kind of stress (I had one that had been through a difficult lambing), they often lose patches of their wool. Watch for this if you're trying to make a woolly rug!
The basic process I followed was:
The skins were all frozen, so I soaked them overnight to defrost and soften the fleshy bits.
The following day, I scraped the flesh and membranes off the inside of the hides using half a telegraph pole as a scraping post and a straight sided but blunt metal blade to scrape with. (For rabbits, I just use a sharpened piece of wood, so using metal was already new to me!)
My scraping post can be seen below, where I was doing a wool-off hide.
The process now diverges depending on whether you're doing wool-on or making chamois leather:
Wool on
I washed the wool thoroughly with soap and tried to get rid of any marker dye/stains.
Wool off
I put the skin into a lye solution for a few days, until the wool started to slip.
Next, I removed the wool and scraped the epidermal layer off the skin - I did this in two stages, removing the wool first and keeping it aside as I want to use it for something else and then scraping the epidermal layer off. If I had difficulty scraping the epidermis off, I put it back in the lye solution a bit longer and then tried again.
Once scraped, I washed the skin to get rid of the awful stench. They really smell after a few days in lye solution!
Both wool-on and wool-off
I stretched the hides on a frame. To get an even tension, I used one piece of nylon string and wound it round and round through the frame and hide. The string went through the hide about every 5 inches around the edge. A leather needle helps with this.
I let the skin dry a bit, just enough so it's still tacky and will absorb more moisture when I added the tanning solution, but not too much or the solution runs over the top and refuses to soak in.
I made a batch of tanning solution. For each sheepskin, I used 4 eggs and 2 egg yolks with a dash of hot water to make the mixture hand-warm (thanks to Dogwood for the proportions). This was enough to rub into one sheep hide thoroughly. I tried to work as much of the solution into the hide as possible from the inside of the hide if wool-on, on both sides if wool-off.
I allowed the skin to dry - manipulating it as it dries to keep it soft. Once the skin started to change colour when I stretched it (the skins I have turn pale) I take them off the frame and start pulling them around a taught piece of baler's twine. (A pole or piece of cable would do instead). I keep working the skin until it is completely dry. Holding the wool-off skins up to the light helps show where the skin is still damp, as these areas let more light through.
Once the skins were dry and soft, I stored them inside the house to ensure they don't get damp again before I get a chance to smoke them.
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