Thread: Simple tanning recipe

Your leather shoe soles are tanned using bark - the word 'tan' being derived by the principal of using tannin (from tree bark) in the process of preserving skins.
You can tan using tea leaves .............
Lots of ways to do it - the alum one was quite popular back in the sixties and seventies, then seemed to go underground a bit when the Leidreiter kits came out - and I think that's chrome tanning.

Tanning basically changes the chemistry within the skin whilst making it more durable. I used to process 'parchment' which uses lime to alter the skin chemistry - made it like paper - and that parchment given reasonable care could last 500 years. The Declaration of Independence is written on it, so is the English Magna Carta, the Book of Kells and so much more - it was the 'paper' before paper was made and called parchment.

And shooting a possum in the head is probably better than splitting the skull open with a chisel to extract the brain ................

In most cases concerning anything - there's usually more than one way to skin a cat ................... - I know three different ways to skin a possum.
Which prbably isn't much to boast about