How to Prepare and Tan Your Own Leather Skins

Some of my earliest memories are from the summers when I spent several weeks with my Grand Aunt and Uncle who lived on a small farm and owned a large piece of unimproved land in New Mexico. They grew vegetables and raised some cows and chickens, and they used their larger acreage to hunt or let friends hunt. As I recall, their favorite hunt was a deer hunt. Unlike many of my friends, I didn't realize that most kids don't see gathering half of the evening's dinner from the vegetable patch and watching your Auntie prepare a very fresh chicken. I understand that many people then and now are uncomfortable with this subject and I have no quarrel with those who choose a lifestyle free of the need to do these things. My Auntie passed away a few years ago but Uncle Gee (we all called him that) still lives on the land where he was born and still grows, raises, hunts-for and prepares his own food and many things he used around the home as well.

Today I too tend to garden a little and buy some of my produce at the grocery store. I don't eat much meat and don't hunt now, but during my childhood Uncle thought these were good skills for anyone to have. He believed in self-sufficiency and I was also lucky that he believed in it for girls as much as for boys. I learned from him how to shoot a rifle or shotgun, how to use a good knife for many things, and how to do some basic skinning and tanning. He didn't like waste, and when he hunted or raised his livestock for food, he tried to use every part of the animal. He started me on leather-work with a squirrel hide, and even then he grilled the meat to feed his dogs and ground the bone for the vegetable patch. It is true that it can be easiest to start with a small project, so if you truly want to try this I also recommend a small piece of leather. You can also obtain small patches of unworked deer hide to work with if you prefer, and it is one of the easier leathers to work with. Deer are also some of the most commonly wasted hides in the United States.

Obtaining hide to practice with (or later to do full projects with) you can do your own hunting, ask friends who hunt, from butchers who will do game butchering for customers, or you can order hide by mail or on the Internet. If you do your own hunting, you will of course need to learn or already know how to properly skin the animal. it is beyond the scope of this article to go deeply into skinning, but a badly knife-scarred hide will not turn out nearly as well, so I do recommend that you become careful about your hide choices as you go along. Learn to skin and flesh the hide well for yourself or get your hide from those who can and you are ready to start preparing for tanning. You'll also need a number of items to do this whole process, but the ones I'll talk about here can usually be obtained locally or mail-ordered.

Trim any ragged edges from the hide and make sure that it appears reasonably clean and free of dirt. When you trim the edges, do so from the skin side and not the side with hair. If you plan to remove the hair, you'll need to take a step to do this. Mix 5 gallons of water with 5 quarts of hydrated lime. Leave the hide in this solution until it is easy to just slide the hair off of the skin with your hand. Remember- patience is a key in this process! If you plan to remove the hair, this soaking will usually take about seven to ten days or so. Once soaked, spread the hide out on a very smooth surface and push off all remaining hair with a blunt edge such as a deliberately dull knife the back and blunted side of a knife. As you go, you'll also be removing any remaining grease or lime. My Uncle always saved all this material as well since it is still useful. Everything from the grease to the lime can be stored for a short time to use in the garden if your soil is too acidic. Some people save the body hair of the deer for tying flies for fly fishing.

Soak your now cleaned hide in plain water for about five hours. Repeat the scraping method you just did once more. Now you'll soak the hide yet again, but this time you need to clear all the lime and the chemical processes of the lime. For an average hide you might need 10 gallons of water, and into that put 1 pint of vinegar. (This is an example, so adjust the numbers as necessary for larger or smaller hides.) Mix the water and vinegar well but don't use anything metal to mix it as this can add unwanted ingredients! A wooden board or paddle works well. Put your hide into this mix for 24 hours.

To begin the tanning process, there are a number of ways it can be done but I can best tell you the old-fashioned ways that I learned it. If you decide you get into tanning more seriously you'll want to explore other modern tanning methods. For your first practice tan you can choose a skin without fur/hair (cleaned as described above) and start with the Salt and Alum style of tanning. To begin with your cleaned skin, mix 1 pound of ammonia alum in a gallon of water. Use another container to mix 4 ounces of baking soda and 8 ounces of salt in a half-gallon of water. Pour the second solution (salt/soda) slowly into the first solution (alum) while stirring rapidly with a wooden utensil. Immediately immerse your very clean skin into this solution and leave it for four or five days. Once the skin feels extremely flexible and easy to spread, spread it out very smoothly and tack it with the flesh side out. Add enough plain flour to your used salt and alum mixture to make it into a very thin paste. Spread this paste out on the skin until it is coated lightly. Make sure you don't leave any un-pasted spots.

Cover and save your un-used paste. The next day, scrape off the paste. if you need to add some water to make your mix into a thin paste again, do so and mix well. Spread the second coat of paste onto your scraped hide. If the skin is very thick you may need to repeat this process again for a third day. On the last coat whether second or third, leave it on for a full 4 days. Scrape away the paste a final time and put the skin into some fresh water with an ounce of borax mixed in and clean the skin very well. Lay the skin out on your board and smooth it very well again. For this non-fur tanning method, you are ready to proceed with oiling and finishing.

Allow the tanned and wet leather to dry some. While it is still quite damp, apply a coat of oil. The type of oil can vary depending on several things. If you don't plan to do any sewing or stitching on your finished product, neats-foot oil is inexpensive and fine. Neats-foot can rot stitching, though, so if you'll sew your skin into boots or clothing or you're doing large pieces to be stitched and put over a saddle tree, you don't want to use this type of oil. My favorite choice is olive oil which has never caused harm to any of my saddle stitching and does a nice job of softening and offering water-resistance. Skins softened with neats-foot or olive oil are often a little stretchy and very nice for making jackets or bags and purses. If you do lots of tanning and you've saved fats, you can boil these down to oil and used those oils for this part of the work. Melting down these kinds of fats (from animals like deer ad cow) makes tallow which is quite waxy. You may recall that tallow can even be used to make candles although they are usually smoky and not-too-pleasant smelling from what I recall. If you use this tallow for your oil, your resulting leather will feel heavier and somewhat more stiff. It will also be much more waterproof, so it can be a good choice if you are creating large pieces to build a yurt or other outdoor uses. Also, if you are making leather boots that may get very dirty this is another good reason to go with tallow since you can then hose your boots down and just re-oil with a bit of olive oil to keep your boots in supreme condition.

Besides choosing a type of oil, you may be unsure in early projects on how much oil to use. If the type of skin you tanned is already fairly greasy, you will realize soon that you need less oil worked into it to make it pliable. Raccoon is very greasy skin and needs very little added oil. Deerskin is less fatty and will require more oil. The best way to get the hang of this is to practice on a variety of types of skins and with different kinds of oils. You'll find what works best for you as an artist, and tanning is indeed an art and a craft. You can end up with some wonderful items if you become very good and you can earn good money as well. People who don't wish to tan but want to work with good leather will buy well tanned and finished leather. You can also make very high quality decorative items, clothing, footwear, camping gear, and livestock equipment.

To finish your leather now that you've worked oil into it, lay the skin down on a smooth surface. The side that had the hair should go down. Apply one more coat of your chosen oil but this time do it very smoothly using your hand or a very good paint brush that won't lose fibers while you work. Wait thirty minutes and repeat the process. Cover the hide with a plastic sheet and leave it overnight. If you've done multiple skins you can stack them with the flesh sides together and cover the stack with plastic.

In the morning, hang the skin with the fur side out in a way that can allow the skin to dry. A simple method is to drape it over a couple of sawhorses which is how my Uncle did it. To stretch the skin, my Uncle would put a plywood board underneath and nail the skin firmly, hair-side down on the board. Then he could move the sawhorses to increase the stretch more. He did it with regular nails and put them in a half inch from the edge and with the nails spaced about 6 inches apart on a deer-size skin. Then he'd leave it to dry at room temperature.

Since then I've seen some better stretching methods done with a frame where the skin is pulled evenly and outward to the sides of the frame and if I continue my tanning hobby I plan to use this method as I believe that it may result in a better end-result. Still, Uncle Gee did get a nice and usable product with his method and I have been successful with this inexpensive stretching method as well.

To achieve the softest possible skin you need to work the skin repeatedly while it is drying. I learned to do this by loosening the skin and working it over the sanded and smoothed edge of a piece of wood. Work it all over and then leave it to dry a bit more. Repeat until you reach the desired softness. To clean and fully dry your hide, put the entire skin in a container filled with clean and dry hardwood sawdust. Tumble the skin around in it, pull the skin out and shake it and beat on it like you would clean a rug. If needed, repeat this process until the skin is clean and free of any remaining greasy spots. If the flesh side is still a bit rough you can work it over with a fine piece of sandpaper pulled over a block.

Completing these steps will leave you with a tanned and oiled hide and if you can store it or use it for a project right away. When I did this, I liked to have a project in mind that fit the size and shape of my skin or skins. If you plan to store your hide for awhile, though, just be sure you put it in a safe spot. Dogs love to chew up any leather, and especially leather that you've been working on for weeks. Store your hide in a relatively dry area to avoid any kind of rot or mold, though if your process was done very well this shouldn't occur. You'll need to check your stored hides occasionally since dry leather will crack. if you see it getting dry, give it a fresh coat of olive or other oil.

There are many other methods of completing this process. Some take less time and some take even more, some were done even by ancient peoples while others are fairly recent innovations. Read up on tanning and try some other ideas. Your tanned and oiled projects can become gorgeous items and heirlooms if you enjoy this art form.