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Brain Tanning Deer Hide?

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jethro224

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I saved the head and hide from my last doe with plans to try my hand at brain tanning. Anybody got a good link for directions? Or just directions? Thanks for any tips. :hatsoff:
 
While on the subject of brain tan- how long does it take? I thought it was a rather lengthy process. The reason I ask is because there are several different period writings of the mountain men shooting animals to make moccasins and sometimes it speaks of the skins being "dressed" which might mean just the hair was taken off- I say that because they are camped at a spot only a couple of days.
If rawhide was used for the moccasins- then it seems to me the sideseam would be the most practical because I can't see trying to make any sort of puckered toe type. On the other hand the rawhide might have just been cut into soles but then that doesn't jibe with stuff you read about thorns piecing the mocassins.
Any how- how long does it take to brain tan a deer hide? One brain is just enough for one hide? How about that!
 
According to the video I bought off braintan.com, it will take a couple off and on days...

Haven't tried myself yet to be sure.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Jefro I posted a how to tutorial some ways back in the craft section, any questions just ask, be more than happy to help out.
 
crockett said:
While on the subject of brain tan- how long does it take? I thought it was a rather lengthy process. The reason I ask is because there are several different period writings of the mountain men shooting animals to make moccasins and sometimes it speaks of the skins being "dressed" which might mean just the hair was taken off- I say that because they are camped at a spot only a couple of days.
If rawhide was used for the moccasins- then it seems to me the sideseam would be the most practical because I can't see trying to make any sort of puckered toe type. On the other hand the rawhide might have just been cut into soles but then that doesn't jibe with stuff you read about thorns piecing the mocassins.
Any how- how long does it take to brain tan a deer hide? One brain is just enough for one hide? How about that!
Depends a lot on the weather, soaking in lime water can speed the process up, two to three days to soak, ring it out after rinsing, then brain, then a day to dress and work the hide. Bucking, the process of using an alkali to break down the mucus membrane in the hide, can be as fast as two days, a short time, as fast as 20 minutes to actually brain the hide, and a few hours to work the hide down to the finished item. The hair and epidermus removel, "Graining" is accomplished by the alkali soak and much hard work with a fleshing tool and a beam. It can be done rather quickly but not in cold weather. The colder it is the longer it takes.
 
Here ya go Jefro, simple enough. A bit of comic relief added but you'll be able to do it in no time.

I'm going to teach you how to brain tan. Yes, thats correct, brain tan. Once you figure this out you'll toss every hide you have in the trash and scream AAAAHHHH at the top of your lungs! You’ll kick the dog, snatch the tail of your cat, and basically have a bad attitude towards fur'd things all together.

Step 1. Kill somthing. Easy enough, but make it big enough to bother with, like a deer or somthing.
step 2. skin it, try like heck not to use the knife to much and leave any marks, flesh or fat on the skin.
step 3. Salt the skin down and hang it over night. Ya, ya, I know, salting sets the hair. But it also makes the knife grab the membrane better and makes it easier to peal off.
step 4. Invest in a bottle of whiskey, yer gona need it.
step 5. After you have all the membrane, flesh and fat off the inside of the skin, take a bucket and dump like 10 gallons of water into it. Add about a pound of hydrated lime. You can use wood ash but it takes longer to do it with wood ash.
step 6. for about 3 days to a month keep stirring the bucket with the stinky nasty, smelly, ugly hide in it until the hair will slough off by just wiping your hand against the grain. use a glove or your hand will smell like dead stuff for a very long time.
step 7. Now that the hair has started to slip, and your nearing retirement, lay the skin slick side down and use your dull knife to scrape not only the hair off, but also the epidermis, or however you spell it, at the same time. The reason you do this is so you can tell people "Heck ya, I can brain tan like a pro, and I get lotsa stretch outa my hides. Kinda like the IRS gets lotsa cash outa our wallets.(you'll need a fleshing beam)
Go over the hide a few times, after all, it will only take you about four hours to get all that manure off of the skin the first go round, whats 8 more hours?
step 8. Now that you are crippled and have carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands, take the hide and rinse it in cold water. Then take about 10 gallons of good water, the stuff we aint got much of and is sinful to waste, and dump it in the bucket. No wait, rinse the dang bucket out first. ya, like that. Now, pour in about a pint of viniger. Stir it up good and let the skin swim around in it over night.
step 9. Take the brains you saved,... whatya mean ya didnt save the brains? Geeze, they call it brain tanning for a reason ya know.
Come up with some brains from somewhere, anywhere, no not your next of kin, or brotherinlaw, and put em in a blender. Then add like a cup or two of hot water and turn on the blender. WAIT Dangit! Put the lid on first.Slurry it up real good.
step 10. Take the skin outa the viniger water, no, you cant use the water to mix a salad dressing afterward, thats pushing it don't ya think? Anyway, rinse the skin again in water you don't have enough of to waste, and then wring the skin out real good, twist it up, wrap it around two sticks and twist it so it's like damn near dry.
step 11. Then take the dried up shrivled thing that used to be a deer hide that was as big as a buick and place it it the warm brain slurry. Squish it around real good and then make sure you squish it around again so the brains get sucked up into it real good.
step 12. Let it sit in there over night, after wringin it out you'll start drinking heavely and will need the night to recover from the hangover you'll have. Your brain will hurt, that way you'll know your doin it right.
step 13. Now, take the hide out of the brain slurry and wring it about again, ya, I know you did that, but you have to do it again. Heck, I don't know why, just do what yer told.
step 14. Ok, now you have this dried up shrively thing that again used to be a deer skin, and it looks like a dried up piece of thing that used to be a deer skin, so it must be a dried up shrively thing that is a deer skin. Now you take it and start pulling it in all directions and watch it stretch and turn white. You keep doing this until it is nice and soft and your whiskey bottle is about 1/2 empty. Keep pulling and stretching the hide until it is nice and soft and your bottle of whiskey is empty, and yer done!
 
Is it true that you can use egg whites instead of brains to do this process?

And, if the two booklets I have on brain tanning are correct, do you have to then smoke the hide to set the tanning, after you have stretched out the hide, and rubbed it soft again?

Thanks for the great tutorial. I won't be drinking whiskey( altho I fondly remember those days), but a good 2 or 3 bottles of 7-up or something similar will help get that work done.

Humor always helps teaching. Always. :bow: :thumbsup: :hatsoff: :hatsoff:
 
paulvallandigham said:
Is it true that you can use egg whites instead of brains to do this process?

And, if the two booklets I have on brain tanning are correct, do you have to then smoke the hide to set the tanning, after you have stretched out the hide, and rubbed it soft again?

Thanks for the great tutorial. I won't be drinking whiskey( altho I fondly remember those days), but a good 2 or 3 bottles of 7-up or something similar will help get that work done.

Humor always helps teaching. Always. :bow: :thumbsup: :hatsoff: :hatsoff:
You can use the whole eggs, about a dozen to the hide, or just the yokes, as the yokes contain the needed fats that coat the individual fibers. Once you break the hide down and it is soft then you smoke it.
You can do one hide at a time or two. You'll need to make a sock or "Pillow Case" out of them by gluing the edges together or stitching them together with a sewing machine. I have smoked them in a smoke house and they come out a nice color but the smoke doesnt really penetrate the hides well. The smoke will coat the fibers again if it penetrates right and make the hide easier to break or stretch out if it becomes wet.

I know several people that dont smoke them out right but hang them in the top cone of a tipi when they are not being worn and the smoke going up thru the vent does a god job of smoking them, you also dont have any white edges on sleeves and fringe that is a result of cutting them after they have been smoked.

One trick that you can do that will help keep them water resistant is to use protal tanning oils from places like vandykes taxidermy supply, or any other tanning supply house, or even Lexol. These tanning oils are super penetraters and really lock onto the fibers. You'll still have to stretch them back out but it will help.

Buckskin, real buckskin, is good stuff to make clothing out of but when its cold and wet, its cold and wet. But its not clamy like commercial tanned grain on hides. If a person really wants to be decked out in some nice brain tanned buckedskin its well worth the effort to do a couple of hides. It takes about 5 average deer hides, a few less if you have really big deer, to make a set of britches, less if breeches are made, and usually four for an xlg plains style so called "War" shirt. So always keep that in mind when your collecting hides.
:hatsoff:
 
Bravo, very well done tutorial!! :thumbsup: That baby needs to go into the tutorial section.
 
I would think that a tipi style tri pod, placed above a Pit fire, where green wood is burned slowly to produce the smoke, would be the best way to drape the hides over the fire, to get them smoked through.You can supplement the hide(s) with pieces of wet canvas( Tarp?), or denim( old jeans?), or other wet cloth, to complete the enclosure, to ensure that the smoke goes through the hide, and not away from it. You don't have to sew the hide shut into that pillow case, doing the tipi, or wigwam approach to supporting the hides.

A fire pit allows you to cut a small side groove in the earth to let air feed the fire, slowly and keep it burning the green wood. It also gives you access to the fire to add more wet wood. This might be a good time to use soft woods, that have been rinsed in a stream( or with a garden hose), so that you get plenty of steam and smoke to work the hides, and some pine oils into the hide. They can't hurt the smell. :thumbsup:
 
You can do that easy enough, remember always, small fire, BIG SMOKE! any heat that is to hot to hold yer hand over will destroy the hides, so keep the fire low and slow. You can make a tripod and just drape the hides over it tipi style. There are a lot of ways to do this and thats one of the easy ways but you can get some mixmatched colors so you have to watch them carefully and move them often checking for the color you want often as well..

Another thing to avoid is real pitchy woods like pine, ash juniper and the like. Its always been recomended by the elders that still carried on the tradition that hard woods be used. When I was a boy we sometimes used mangrove wood or even mango.gives it a nice color. Hard to get mangrove wood out here though. Even tougher to get mango.
Now days I use local live oak, red oak, or some times spanish oak.
 
So, you are using the hard woods to get a lighter color? I Knew that soft woods would leave it more gray, or even other colors, but I didn't know why people used hardwoods almost exclusively. We have poplar( cottonwood, Aspen) and Willow here, along with hickory, Ash, Walnut, Oaks and Maple hard woods. We have both White Oak, and Red Oak.

Is one Oak preferred over another? Thanks.
 
Not thast I know of Paul, We use what grows here, but I know people that swear by apple and peach. They say it gives a beautiful color. I hope to try it one day.
 
We also have crabapple, hawthorne, and sassafras trees around here, mixed with pin oaks. I wish we had a source of information about these different woods, and what they were used to do, such as smoking brain tanned hides. We also have a few birches- mostly in town, as they don't usually appear here in any forest, unless someone planted them. Fruit trees are the same deal- someone has to plant them, but we find them all over. I have a dogwood tree in my front yard that has some nice wood to it.
 
In Alaska most natives smoke useing punk wood some what rotten softwood gives a nice light brown and sell of a #2 ti pencils I just put my moose hides in the smoke house when doing meat or salmon
 
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