Garment tanning DIY|Tanning|Forum|Taxidermy Talk

For a garment tan, I will sugest brain tanning. It’s what they use to make buckskin clothing for mountain man re enactments. There are web sites for brain tanning. You have to smoke them after tanning and they will always be soft and supple even after you wash them in the washing machine from time to time or if they are left out in the rain. The Native Americans did their clothes and furs this way. It’s messy and hard work, but any diy garment tan will be, hard work anyway, unless you have a shaving machine, and a huge six foot high, four foot wide drum with 50 to 100 pounds of saw dust or cob grit.

Because you are going to be raking that lil’ ol’ raccoon skin back and forth over a 2×4 or a dull axe head blade or a shovel blade for hours while it slowly dries, if it was oiled properly, and you pull and twist and rake and pull and twist and rake and………. you will get it about a third or maybe two thirds as soft and stretchy as a commercial garment tan. With the drum, you turn it on and it will pull and twist over and over as the saw dust or grit “rake” it over and over and over while you sit and sip iced tea. I would suggest, from my research, that fifty pounds is minimum for one hide or twenty. One hundred pounds is even better. A smaller drum that is 4feet by 4feet would be the smallest you could go with a small skin and get the benefit, I believe. This is because you need the drop to pound and pulverize and twist that skin soft. This is why all my soft tanned hides go to the tannery. I busted my butt for hours on a raccoon skin once and it wasn’t nearly as nice as a commercial one. You will never get the hide as soft and you will never get the hair as soft and shiny as a commercial one if you don’t have their specialized equipment. You can get close and some experienced home tanners may be able to achieve it, but I don’t want to work that hard or buy the equipment when I can spend about 30 to 50 bucks and get back something awesomely beautiful.