Having trouble with my rabbit hides...

[Saul Gilsenan]

I've got some rabbit pelts that I took home from a recent bushcraft course I was on. The instructions I got for preparing them were to cover them in salt for a few days then take them out and scrape off the membrane. Then soak them in the potash alum solution for a few days, then dry and wash in detergent.

The problem I'm having is I think I've gone down too deep whilst scraping off the membrane. It's quite tough and it peels away. Some areas look good and thick where I've removed 1 layer already and the other half I can see light through it when I hold it up and the hair has gone really patchy. I'm really not sure exactly how deep I'm supposed to be going with this and the huge amount of different ways of doing it is really confusing me and quite frankly stressing me out!

 

[Toddy]

Ah, sounds as though you're through to the hair follicles

Rabbit skins are thin anyway.

If the hair is slipping, it's not going to stop.

What you could do is rescue the better parts of them.

This is going to sound totally weird, but it works.

Wash them in biological washing liquid and just warm water. Rinse them really, really well and you should find that you can take off any gunk on the skin side quite easily. Wash again if necessary, but this time rinse in three times your usual amount of fabric conditioner, and then gently pin the skins out until they are almost dry.
Then rub plain hand cream into the back of them, and work the skins as you do so.

Basically it's a clean version of braintanning.

I don't know what state your skins are in though, and if the fur is slipping now then they're already damaged.

I suppose it depends on what you want to do with them ? They could still be cut into strips for a rabbit skin blanket, and since those lose hair anyway when they're cut, it won't matter.
If it's mitts or gloves, you might be best using the best bits and piecing them to make liners.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Saul Gilsenan]

Cheers bud I'll give that a go and try and rescue the first one. I've set it aside in a bowl of salted water for the moment.

With pelt #2 I wet it quite a lot after taking it out of the salt and it seems to be a lot easier to work with. I've removed the layer with the veins in, do I now need to remove the layer below that?

Also I've not decided what I'm going to do with it yet. Just as long as I've got something usable at the end! It'd be nice to have something with the fur on as it is nice but if that doesn't work then I'll still use the skin as leather.