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!