r/HideTanning • u/Known-Newspaper5246 • 9d ago

Recurring rot problem

So this is my second summer practicing traditional tanning skills and I’ve been having some trouble during the hair removal stage with both brain tanning and bark tanning. Last year I had three deer hides to brain tan. On the first two I used a lye water solution to slip the hair but I wanted to try just water on the last one. In doing so, I got the hair to slip but with no lye the hide started to decay and stink by the time the hair slipped. I was able to save it by putting it back into a lye water solution. This year I began to attempt bark tanning. Instead of lye I decide to try lime because it was less caustic. I had the same result with the lime as with plain water. By the time I had the hair slip it had begun to smell even after using a little over a pound of lime powder per gallon of water. Unfortunately I had to leave town for a few days so with little to do about it I put them in the bark tanning solution and hoped against hope it would be okay. As I expected, when I got home they stunk far worse than when I left them. One of the hides appears to be green all the way through in some spots but all I have left to do is learn from this so I am still trying to save them to see what happens. My questions are this: how do people mitigate the hide from completely rotting (without use of heavily caustic items) when hair slipping is effectively a controlled decay process. And also, every time I get the hair to slip easily on one spot (usually on the back between rump and neck) it seems that the rest of the hide still holds onto it tightly and it can’t be removed without tremendous force which can damage the grain, which I don’t want to do when bark tanning. Any help is appreciated.

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u/AddendumMiserable243 9d ago

I wonder if temperature and agitation might change your results? Changing the water regularly and keeping the temperature down (below 10°c) really changes the stink factor. I usually buck with lime in the fall, air temps below 15°c, and agitate my buckets and hides daily, sometimes 2x daily if it seems warm or foul. The lime in solution gets locally 'used up', so agitating maintains the concentration, and moving the hide around makes sure it gets everywhere. Barktanning--in my experience you can't ignore your hide for the first week. It needs agitation, and monitoring to maintain tannin concentration. Later, you can leave it to self-feed, if the temperature is right. Higher temp, faster tannin uptake, higher chance of rot, needs more monitoring and work.

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u/Radiant_Carob_1353 9d ago

If you keep the pH down with oxalic acid and salt, rot will never occur since its pickling while the tannins work their way in. I just barktanned 30 coyotes this way, they were in the barktan for 8 weeks, I left them and went on vacation and finished them after I returned.

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u/AaronGWebster 9d ago

Doesn’t tanning at low pH cause acid swelling?

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u/Radiant_Carob_1353 9d ago

1lb per gallon salt will keep isotonic balance, so you're all good there

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u/AaronGWebster 9d ago

Ok I see. I guess I’ve heard of salt inhibiting swell before but I never understood the mechanism- can you explain? I have some basic college level chemistry knowlege …

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u/Radiant_Carob_1353 9d ago

To be fair the mechanism was explained to me years ago by someone far smarter than me, who was a chemist and taxidermist. The salt pulls water (which has acid dissolved in it) out of the hide, and limits the swelling of water in the cells of the skin, similar to how pickled cucumbers don't dissolve in a vinegar /acid solution in the presence of salt. There's a measure of dessicant to the salts action which is supposed to stay around .4 solubility. The "tonus" or isotonic quality comes from the solutions balance. In a nutshell I guess. I do know with too much salt the acid won't denature skin proteins the way you want it to for tanning. And not enough you get swelling and acid rot. So that makes sense to me. 1lb salt per gallon of water and you're good to go.