MAKE YOUR OWN LEATHER All you need is the hide from a favorite animal. Right?
You have to clean them, cut the one you select to a pattern you just happened to have handy, then sew it up in some way – possibly using long strips of raw hide trimmed from the edge of the larger pieces.
If the American frontiersmen and women could have made good leather with their short stock of tools and supplies, we can. They did have a good stock of wild animals of many kinds available for the taking.
They didn't use the fancy word “tanning” in those days. They worked to make the skins firm, pliable, decay free, with even texture and coloring, ready for the making of dresses, skirts, aprons, cloaks, shoes, headgear, tepee furnishings - even sturdy, durable tents.
Start with fresh hides. Old ones will not do. Soak the hides in clean water for three days or more. Keep them completely submerged even if you have to hold them down with rocks. Change the water daily. After that, the hairs will “slip”and come off in chunks. If some hairs fail to slip off, sift wood ashes on those areas; roll the hides up with the fur inside and wait a day or more to see if the wood ashes made enough lye to loosen up the stubborn hairs. When they have, rinse the cleaned hides in clean, cold water.
See! Only a week or so have passed and you are ready for the next step called “Fleshing”.
Debark a six-foot log to make a “Fleshing Beam”. Bury the log end up and slanted in the ground so that the angle facing you is about even with your waist line. Rinse the hides once more and wring each one out before you placed it athwart the fleshing beam -all debarked and made as smooth as you can get it. Then your job is to remove anything adhering to the hide surface by pounding, pressing, scapeing and doing whatever you can to remove any uneven or thick places in the hide. You are to even out the thickness of the piece of make each one as uniform as possible. When you have completed rinse it out in cold water and wring it out. Now, place it on a large frame and stretch it tight.
You still must do a “Brain Tanning” procedure and and an action called “Breaking the Hide”. You make up a pasty mix of the brains of the animal you killed adding live scraps and cow's brains as needed. Rub mixture into the framed hide to get even color The other task is to stretch the pelt on a frame or between two trees and beat it gently with a tool that looks like a canoe oar. In so doing you break down part of the cell structure of the hide and make it soft and supple.
Stretch the finished hide over hot coals fed with wet corn chips, corn cobs, or beech wood chips. It is all well-tented so the smoke becomes part of the hide. When the hide is exactly the shade of brown you wanted it to be...put the fire out...fold the leather neatly and put it on a shelf to rest a while.
Go thou, and do the same.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 9-6-06[c567wds]
