u/redfish1994

Hi everyone,

This community has been so helpful that I thought I’d share my first experience tanning a hide and the steps I followed. Hopefully this can be useful for someone else new to this.

Here are the steps that I followed:

1. ⁠I cut the hide to only keep the centre portion which was a bit thicker.
2. ⁠I fleshed it using a cheese knife that I bought at a fair. Overall it worked fine but I had to be careful when working on the grain side not to damage it.
3. ⁠I let it soak in a mixture of 10gal of water and 1lbs of hydrated lime for 3 days. Most of the hair slipped but next time I would soak it a bit longer as some shorter hair remained on the finished leather (I was able to sand them off once dry).
4. ⁠I washed the hide and removed as much water as I could working it on the fleshing beam.
5. ⁠I neutralized it in 5gal of water and 1/4 cup of vinegar for 30min. Then I let it soak for 24h in clean water.
6. ⁠I boiled 5gal of water and a 5gal bucket full of bark. My solution had a concentration of 1.004 on my hydrometer which is lower than what you typically want from what I read (closer to 1.010).
7. ⁠It soaked for 2 months in this solution and then I transfered it in a new batch which had the same concentration for another 2 months. The middle layer of the thicker parts of the leather was still white but I no longer had the patience so decided to end the process here.
8. ⁠I washed the hide under clean water and removed as much water as I could by rolling it in a towel.
9. ⁠I let it dry partially under the sun and then started working it by folding and rolling it on a table. I then stapled it to a plywood so that it would dry flat.
10. ⁠I applied olive oil and then used dubbin grease to finish it.

Overall I am super happy with the result. The leather is a bit rigid but that’s exactly what I was looking for as I want to craft sheaths with it. I wasn’t able to find a whole lot of examples of bark tanned deer hide with the grain on so I’m really surprised by how beautiful it turned out and the leather is a nice thickness for things such as wallets.

Hi everyone,

I’m working on my first deer hide and have a few questions for you. It has been soaking in bark tanning solution for the past 6 weeks and while transferring it to a new solution today I noticed that some short hairs are still remaining on the hide (I probably missed them while dehairing in my garage). I’m wondering what is the best way to remove them now considering that they are too short to pull on them with my hands.

I also continued removing the inside membrane today as there was some remaining and would welcome your views on whether there is still some membrane left.

Thanks for your help