Help needed on Brain-tanning buckskin

[Earthpeace]

Greetings everyone!
I have been tanning sheep skins and furs for years.
I recently decided I would have a go at Brain-tanning ( to make myself some buckskin trousers).
I keep failling some how? Its a problem with the dehairing. Here's my
explanation:, I am putting the goat or sheep skin in a large tub of water and about 1/4 of bucket of fire ash ( manly pine does this make a difference?)
About half the skins come out the mix with holes in them and they all smell very fowl like there rotting (which they probably are) but the others look ok.
I started de-hairing, the hair came of easily and look smooth and clean. I then soaked it in the warm/hot brain mix, wringed the skin and resoaked again until all the brain mix was gone.
When the skin started to dry I worked in for hours and it turned out stiff!
I skracted my head, and thought it must have been lack of brain mix but on closer observation I saw that in the place where I had scoured the skin it was very soft. So the next one I tried I went down a layer but it did not seem right, it was ruff and lumpy and dam near impossible it get off. But in the end I managed to get the most of this layer off. It turned out quite soft.
So, Im puzzled!!! in all the tanning books I have it says that the dehairing process is the easiest so what Im I doing wrong??????

Maybe I am not leaving it in the ash and water long enough?
But I find that if I leave it in longer it starts to rot.

Any advice would be of great help

 

[Eric_Methven]

You need to use hard wood ashes. It is the potassium salts which are a strong alkali that loosens the hair. Leaving it in for too long will destroy the skin eventually.
You might find that rubbing the brain mix into the skin will work better, rather than soaking it in solution. Also I find that adding the animal's liver to the brain mix works best. Once all the brain mix is absorbed into the skin, you must work the skin over a hard but blunt object like the back of a wooden chair. You need to work it until it is dry and soft. What this does is break down the colagen in the skin. However, if the skin gets wet it will go hard again as the colagen reforms within the skin. To stop this happening you need to smoke the skin. This is the secret of buckskin. The smoke breaks down the colagen permanently so that buckskin stays soft even after a soaking. Cold smoking is best, so avoid direct heat and flame. A smoke box with a fire nearby works best with the smoke directed into the box through a piece of pipe will do the trick. I find the best wood for buckskin smoking is the dry dead wood of the birch tree. It will give copious amounts of smoke and make the buckskin a lovely tan colour.

Eric

 

[James Watson]

Hi

Thanks for your advise Eric,
I will try hard wood ash this time!
I have not tried smoking the skins yet, because the skins were not soft enough to bother finishing them. But look forwards to trying!
Do you know which layer I am supposed to be on? The smooth white layer or the ruff/lumpy one underneath?


If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, try again

Did you wash the wood ash out of your hide? If not, thats proberbly why it came out hard due to the lack of brain penitration.

Did you remove only the hair or layers of skin also. You don't need to remove the skin if you brain the hide enough 4 or 5 times to make sure.

Best resource I now for making wet scrape Buckskin is www.braintan.com

Hope this helps,

James

 

[Earthpeace]

Hi



Did you wash the wood ash out of your hide? If not, thats proberbly why it came out hard due to the lack of brain penitration.

Did you remove only the hair or layers of skin also. You don't need to remove the skin if you brain the hide enough 4 or 5 times to make sure.

Best resource I now for making wet scrape Buckskin is braintan.com.

Hope this helps,

James

Yes i washed the ash out and then soaked the skin in a bucket of water with a bit of vinegar in it. On the first one i removed just the hair but on the second i took off one layer of skin. The second turned out a little softer.

 

[Eric_Methven]

You really do need to remove the layer of skin under the hair to make buckskin. There's basically three layers on the hide. The outermost is the epidermis, where the hair comes out of. It's very thin and usually comes right off when you slip the hair. Next is the grain layer. The grain is the shiny side you see in finished leather. The grain doesn't stretch so it has to be scraped right off on a fleshing beam so you can pull and tug the buckskin to make it soft. You need to just be left with the suede like lower layer of the skin. Make sure every bit of the grain is off before braintanning otherwise the brain mash won't penetrate and you'll end up with hard spots that just won't soften no matter how hard you work the skin.

Eric

 

[SilverWolf]

You're not getting the lye solution right. Richards in Prim Tech suggests that with soft wood you need to make the solution as thick as a milkshake (american milkshake). That should help. You do this for 3 days or so (try rubbing the hair away will tell you when it's ready). The rinse the ash off and you're ready to go. Once free of hair leave to rinse in running water for a day or something like that. I don't understand the need for the bran mix.

I haven't done so much tanning myself but I've just finished a masters dissertation of Bronze Age hide working, which why I came across Richard's advice in prim tech.

 

[Earthpeace]

I pulled out the goat skin this morning. I scraped off the hair and dandruff like layer no problem, I tried to go down a layer but the only thing I got was holes.
After a couple of hours fighting with the skin I decided to go ahead and tan it so I made a good thick mix of cook brain & liver and smother skin in the warm mix sevral times. cut a long story short after a lot of pulling it turned out stiff. ( I know Eric I sould have took off that other layer) .
I put the skin back in a bucket of water to soak then I tried to get off this layer. I found a place on the skin and got hold of this layer which was harder than the ones under it but I it was quite thick and then I pulled it off the skin was so thin I could see my finger the other side and keeped getting hole all over the place. :sadwavey:
Thought
Can you make any skin into buckskin or does it have to be only big think skins?
People talk about the skin being swolen when coming out the lime bath, I note my skin was not, it just looked like a fresh skin except the hair was coming out, ( maybe I am not leaving it in long enough)
Angora goats probably have very thick epidermis layer so they do not cut as easy when being shorn the only problem is there is nothing left once you have taken it off.
I hope this makes some sense
The poor skin ended up in the compost it was so full of holes.
I put a big thick stag skin in a lime mix before I came in.
Any help & info before I do this one would be much appreciated

 

[Eric_Methven]

Hydrated lime is pretty potent for hair removal. It may be better to use a weak solution of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda). This is what lye is when wood ash is not available. Wood ash produces potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide is simply a much stronger alkali. It does the job though. I've never made buckskin from sheepskins, so I don't know how thik the different layers of skin are. But deer skin will produce good buckskin provided you flesh it properly, slip the hair properly and get the grain layer off, otherwise it won't soften, no matter how much you pull and stretch it.

Once you finish with soaking it in water after taking off the hair, you must wring it out thoroughly otherwise the brain mix won't penetrate. The brain mix needs to totally penetrate the skin and coat every little part of the fibres that make up the skin. Then it needs to be wrung out again then re-brained and wrung out, maybe three times.

Once you are sure the brain mix has saturated every part of the skin, and you have wrung it so no more moisture drips out, you need to start working it quite violently with a pointy stick if you have it framed, or round a cable if doing it by hand. The cable should be steel cable about a quarter inch thick and a couple of metres long It's best hung from a tree or beam and anchored to the floor. You work the skin over the cable every which way, and keep working at it until the skin is completely dry. It should dry nice and soft.

What you are doing during this process is stopping the colagen in the skin fromreforming into a hard mass (That's why dry leather is hard and wet leather goes soft). If you don't abraid it quickly enough and it dries before you keep the colagen molicules apart, it'll go hard on you and you'll have to wet it again and work it soft again.

Once you have a soft buckskin, you need to smoke it otherwise it'll stiffen up again when it gets wet. What happens to the skin when you smoke it is that the chemicals in the smoke (formaldehide and others) coat the broken colagen molecules and permanently prevent them from joining up again, so even when soaked, smoketanned buckskin will stay soft and supple which is why it is ideal for making clothing.

The best way to smoke it is to either join two skins by gluing the edges together with hide glue and staking it over a smudge fire in a hole in the ground so the smoke penertates all of the hides or if just doing the one skin, fold it in half and glue round the edges so it becomes a tube. Then smoke it the same way, over a smudge fire. It is safer if you also glue the leg of an old pair of jeans to the base of the skin and have the leg act as a chimney so just smoke and no heat gets inside the skin. Use hide glue because it is water soluble and when you wash the smoked skin afterwards to get rid of the acrid smiky smell, the glue will soak right off.

Hope this is clear enough, if not just ask away.

Eric

 

[longshot]

ok this is the best place on line that i know of for info on braintanning and making leather in the fashion of the first nations.

www.braintan.com

these folks do know what they are doing.

dean

 

[Earthpeace]

Anybody know how you delete a tread once you've made one?

 

[longshot]

ask tony or one of the mods. im sure they would be lilling to help you there.


dean