Thread: First hide tanning

Hello everyone,

Thought I’d chuck up a few photos of my first go at tanning a hide and share what I did. Big thanks to @fawkes for gifting me the animal hide in the first place, and also for the knife, I’ll be using it a lot. Really appreciate you travelling so far to bring it all through.

Process I used:
First thing I did was water blast the hide to get all the flesh and membrane off. Then I salted it and rolled it up overnight to pull some of the moisture out. After that I laid it flat with heaps of salt on it for about three days. Once that was done I let the hide dry completely.

After drying, I rehydrated it and put the egg on, laid it flat and let it sit for a few hours. Then I hand stretched it for around four hours until it was mostly dry. When it was nearly dry I rubbed in a mix of beeswax, olive oil and lavender oil and left that overnight.

Pretty happy with how it’s turned out so far for a first attempt. The hide has come up fairly soft and the hair seems to be holding well.

Only downside is I managed to snap the tail off while stretching it, but I’ll sew that back on.

Keen to hear any tips, improvements, or different tanning methods people use. Always happy to learn and do better on the next one.

Cheers,
George