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Oh yes :biggrin:

Looks excellent, Sam, looks beautiful, a really good colour. Golden and soft, not tarry.

I think you have to make it to really understand just how much work it is to do it well. Then do it again and again to make enough to make clothing too.

Doesn't mean folks don't appreciate it, but it's still a lot of patient work.

Looking forward to seeing the finished pieces :)

M
 
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I'm slowly working my way through a stockpile.
As well as these there is
* 3 fallow in rawhide to be rehydrated and worked
* 2 fallow "green" in my folks freezer
*2 muntjac "green" in my folks freezer
*3 (?) roe awaiting tanning in my folks freezer
*8-10 mixed hides in the deer stalkers freezer



reckon I've got sufficient for some clothes in there
 
I'm slowly working my way through a stockpile.
As well as these there is
* 3 fallow in rawhide to be rehydrated and worked
* 2 fallow "green" in my folks freezer
*2 muntjac "green" in my folks freezer
*3 (?) roe awaiting tanning in my folks freezer
*8-10 mixed hides in the deer stalkers freezer



reckon I've got sufficient for some clothes in there

You're going to be busy for some time :lmao:
 
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Very nice. Is there any details of how you get from animal to clothing?
short (ha ha ) version
*skin
*scrape off meat and membrane
*soak in an alkali solution for a few days until hair slips out
*degrain (scrape with a blunt edge tool either custom or a blunt drawknife) *neutralise alkali bath with viniger (spelling)
*soak in brains/ egg/ lecithin and rapeseed oil overnight
* wring as dry as you can
*soften and stretch fibres in all directions, this can be done on bevelled edges, cables,ropes, lashed into a frame and pushed with sticks/paddles, table and chair edges,
* smoke over a punky wood fire either like i have done here on a pole in a smoke shanty or sew into a tube,sew a canvas skirt to bottom of tube and have the fire/punky wood in a hole in ground-pay close attention as at this stage if it flares up the hide and all your hard work will go up in flames
* after smoking put back in brain/egg which ever mix
* soak and work mix really well in
*wring
*soften usually by hand this time, hands like claws springs to mind
*smoke

by now its gonna be soft and appealing

you can repeat the soak/wring/smoke as many times as you like each time it should come out softer and soften faster.

a good book with far more information than the above is "Deerskin to Buckskin" by Matt Richards.


Eventually now that work/childcare/cv-19 has all calmed a bit i plan to either video or photograph the process

Hope this "short" explanation helped
 
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