Wanted:Hide tanning cream
- Thread starter firecrest
- Start date
-
Hey Guest, Early bird pricing on the Summer Moot (29th July - 10th August) available until April 6th, we'd love you to come. PLEASE CLICK HERE to early bird price and get more information.
Supposedly, you can use alum to get a fantasticly soft hide. I have two deer hides to do and Scruff has one, we are gonna get together in a month or two and do them. If you want, we could cram your hide in too.
I dunno about that, I've met plenty of living things that amble through life with practically none!
Patrick or someone will be along if I'm wrong but I believe you can substitute eggs for brains for tanning purposes. There's also the new method using fabric softener and a washing machine, Toddy did a thread about it a while back.
Stephen
Stephen
I read the title and... Wayland beat me to it.
Sounds like a great new insult though. "That bloke hasn't got enough brains to tan his own hide".
Cheers,
Steve
Sounds like a great new insult though. "That bloke hasn't got enough brains to tan his own hide".
Cheers,
Steve
Ive heard a saying "every animal has enough brains to save its hide alive or dead" 
Spam I might do that. I cant brain tan as its brain is long gone, and I dont know much about alum. I have considered washing machine tanning, but its a full red deer skin, though it may yet be the best solution.
And yes, tanning lotion! Try searching on ebay and bloody amber solaire is all it comes up with!
Spam I might do that. I cant brain tan as its brain is long gone, and I dont know much about alum. I have considered washing machine tanning, but its a full red deer skin, though it may yet be the best solution.
And yes, tanning lotion! Try searching on ebay and bloody amber solaire is all it comes up with!
Two better approaches -- one dozen eggs, beaten, mixed with 1 gallon of bath temperature water. Smells great and is cheap. I do almost all my tanning with eggs and I strongly recommend you use eggs.
I typically will leave a dry hide in this mixture for at least 2 hours, and usually overnight. I save the excess when I wring it out because I typically wring, stretch a little then put it back into the eggs for another couple of hours before the final softening.
Another approach, but one I like less: 1/2 bar of ivory soap or pure castille soap, 1/2 cup of Neetsfoot oil. Get a 1 quart plastic container, an old food container works great. Grate the soap into flake and put it in the container. Pour in the Neetsfoot oil. Fill the remainder with HOT water (not boiling, just really hot out of the tap).
Shake this up well. Shake it up well a couple of times a day for about a week. The mixture will get white and have the consistency of mayonaisse. This makes a nice tanning lotion -- and it's good for softening other hard leathers, fyi.
To use as a tanning lotion, mix 1 cup of this mixture with 1/2 gallon of bath temperature water, immerse hide for a few hours (same process as above...)
Personally, I don't like the smell of Neetsfoot oil -- some people LOVE it -- and so I don't use this much. Howver, I've always got a container of this mixture around in case I need to touch up some leather.
I'd go with eggs if I were you. It makes for a great hide...
I typically will leave a dry hide in this mixture for at least 2 hours, and usually overnight. I save the excess when I wring it out because I typically wring, stretch a little then put it back into the eggs for another couple of hours before the final softening.
Another approach, but one I like less: 1/2 bar of ivory soap or pure castille soap, 1/2 cup of Neetsfoot oil. Get a 1 quart plastic container, an old food container works great. Grate the soap into flake and put it in the container. Pour in the Neetsfoot oil. Fill the remainder with HOT water (not boiling, just really hot out of the tap).
Shake this up well. Shake it up well a couple of times a day for about a week. The mixture will get white and have the consistency of mayonaisse. This makes a nice tanning lotion -- and it's good for softening other hard leathers, fyi.
To use as a tanning lotion, mix 1 cup of this mixture with 1/2 gallon of bath temperature water, immerse hide for a few hours (same process as above...)
Personally, I don't like the smell of Neetsfoot oil -- some people LOVE it -- and so I don't use this much. Howver, I've always got a container of this mixture around in case I need to touch up some leather.
I'd go with eggs if I were you. It makes for a great hide...
Excellent
I've seen the egg tanning before but didn't know about the soap and neetsfoot oil.
Thanks for the information :You_Rock_
cheers,
Toddy
I've seen the egg tanning before but didn't know about the soap and neetsfoot oil.
Thanks for the information :You_Rock_
cheers,
Toddy
Yes, eggs work for hair-on tanning -- however you mix them with a lot less water, say about 1/gallon and some extra yolks, maybe an extra half dozen.
For hair on, once you've got the hide stretched and scraped and dried, you can start to smear on the egg mixture with a brush or your hands.
With brains you want a consistency like that of a milk shake when you start applying the brains. But with eggs, you can't get it that thick, so you have to work it a bit more. Keep applying more to the hide and working it in until it starts to get soft. The action of working it with your hands also helps to stretch it. You want to keep putting it in the hide until it won't take more, and then comes the softening part.
When you're asking for a step-by-step, I'm not sure where to start. Have you already fleshed, stretched and scraped the hide? Is it dry now, etc.?
I'll be happy to give you more info if I know where you're at right now in the process.
Also, give google a go for instructions too -- there are some very good resources out there.
I'll warn you, once you start tanning at home -- even if the first one doesn't work out - you'll get the bug and next thing you know you'll be doing it all the time, even though it's a lot of work!
For hair on, once you've got the hide stretched and scraped and dried, you can start to smear on the egg mixture with a brush or your hands.
With brains you want a consistency like that of a milk shake when you start applying the brains. But with eggs, you can't get it that thick, so you have to work it a bit more. Keep applying more to the hide and working it in until it starts to get soft. The action of working it with your hands also helps to stretch it. You want to keep putting it in the hide until it won't take more, and then comes the softening part.
When you're asking for a step-by-step, I'm not sure where to start. Have you already fleshed, stretched and scraped the hide? Is it dry now, etc.?
I'll be happy to give you more info if I know where you're at right now in the process.
Also, give google a go for instructions too -- there are some very good resources out there.
I'll warn you, once you start tanning at home -- even if the first one doesn't work out - you'll get the bug and next thing you know you'll be doing it all the time, even though it's a lot of work!
Excellent
I've seen the egg tanning before but didn't know about the soap and neetsfoot oil.
Thanks for the information :You_Rock_
cheers,
Toddy
You can also use soap and olive oil or canola oil, though I've never done it.
Since personally I don't care for the smell of neetsfoot oil that much, I should give the olive oil a try some day. My daughter loves the neetsfoot smell, though, so to each their own.
Everyone I've ever met agrees that egged tanned leather smells great, though. Kind of vanilla like.
One great use of the neatsfoot oil mixture is that if you mess up a hide and have some stiff spots, it can save you from having to do a whole new wetting and softening cycle.
First you smoke your hide like normal. Smoke it extra thoroughly. What you're doing is protecting the nicely soft spots so that you don't have to soften them again.
Don't worry about airing it out after you're done smoking. We're going to rinse instead.
Take your neetsfoot mixture and get a cup of it in a bucket with three gallons of tepid water. In other words, a thinner solution than you would have if you were using the neetsfoot mixture for tanning. Mix it up well. (I suppose you could use eggs, but I've never tried it for this particular application.)
Now immerse your hide in the water and neetsfoot mixture, slosh it around a bit and let it soak for about an hour. I know this works for hair off, and I don't see any reason it wouldn't work for hair-on.
The water will turn a brownish color from the smoke resins that you're washing out. The cool thing about that is that the smokey water also means the smoke content is mixing with the other fibers and the fats at the same time.
The stiff spots will take up the fats again, the already soft spots won't ge affected.
Now take it out, wring it and let it dry. If it's hair on, stretch it again. This time you just need to do a little bit of softening on the stiff spots right before they dry, so it's easy.
In my experience, the soak in the extra smokey water imparts enough of the smoke alkaloids to the stiff spots so you don't have to smoke the whole hide again. After that, if the hide gets wet, it dries just as soft as before.
One note, this works if you've got a hide with a few spots that are stiff in an otherwise soft hide. If the hide is really stiff, I'm afraid you'll have to do the whole dressing and softening cycle again.
Hope that helps!
Excellent
I've seen the egg tanning before but didn't know about the soap and neetsfoot oil.
Thanks for the information :You_Rock_
cheers,
Toddy
By the way, Toddy, how did your deer hide turn out?
Thank you again for the information. I think I'm going to give the soap and oil a go at some point.
I'm not that fond of the smell of Neatsfoot oil tbh, I know it's just rendered foot and bone grease but it just clings to everything. Smoking the hide afterwards really helps though
The deerskin I did with the washing machine method is still sound and in use and the first one is now over ten years old.
Surprisingly effective but still a lot of work.
I think too often people blame a bad result on a poor hide, when it's usually really a lack of effort working the hide.
The different methods are interesting though, especially using everyday materials and not necessarily bought in chemicals.
Hope yours turns out well Lindsay
cheers.
Toddy
I'm not that fond of the smell of Neatsfoot oil tbh, I know it's just rendered foot and bone grease but it just clings to everything. Smoking the hide afterwards really helps though
The deerskin I did with the washing machine method is still sound and in use and the first one is now over ten years old.
Surprisingly effective but still a lot of work.
I think too often people blame a bad result on a poor hide, when it's usually really a lack of effort working the hide.
The different methods are interesting though, especially using everyday materials and not necessarily bought in chemicals.
Hope yours turns out well Lindsay
cheers.
Toddy
I'm not sure, but I doubt it.
What you're looking for from any of these solutions -- brains, eggs, soap and oil, etc. -- is actually emulsified fats. Those fats coat the collagen fibers of the hide and prevent the glue bonds from being set when it dries.
I don't know much about powdered eggs, but my guess is that the drying process messes with the fat content (and certainly the emulsified bit
) and so it might not work.As it stands, if you add more yolks you get to a solution that works OK for hair on.
Similar threads
