brain tanning a large antelope hide

A few weeks back, Owen and I got a nice Antelope buck hide from our pal Steve on the hunting trip. We scraped most of the membrane right away, and about 70% of the grain. Soaked in water for probably about a week, then bucked it in a lye solution for a day, scraped the rest of the membrane off and still couldn’t get several large patches of grain along the edges. We decided to go ahead anyway. The hide came out of the lye with a VERY rubbery texture, Owen had read on PaleoPlanet forums that it needed to be neutralized before braining. We’d never had lye before, and never had to neutralize anything. But it was decided that we’d just soak it in vinegar/water for 20 minutes or so.

After 2 hours of V

After 20 minutes, we took it out, wrung it, and decided it was starting to look better, so we just threw it back in the vinegar :P Was about 50/50 5% apple vinegar and hose water. An hour, maybe one and a half later…and when we tried to wring the hide out… it was even MORE rubbery then before. We tried and tried and tried until our hands were frozen stiff and our resolve was shattered…

The hide went in the brain solution anyways. About a day of soaking and we returned to red-brown to start working our prize. After pulling it out, we noticed there were significant patches of grain still along the edges, we tried to scrape a few of them off with the post and draw-knives, but it was very slow and unproductive. We began to stretch the hide. Gripping hard and pulling between us, putting our full weight into it, the hide grew in size. We start using a few tree snubs to work it, then as the center (no grain there) began to get dry we took it inside to work it against the table. Within an hour, the center was pretty soft and beautiful…only some really minor rough spots…three ours later everything was dry but the parts where the grain was left was still more or less sopping wet.

We worked it till around midnight then headed home for bed. Sure enough, the next morning the grain had shriveled, dried into a hard crust around the edges, and the two big patches, but the rest of the hide was more or less really soft with only a hint of cardboard feel. Obviously removing ALL of the grain must be the crucial point…but I’m confused how people do it.

We worked it really hard, only giving up on the grain after the draw-knives prettymuch returned zero progress. We did soak this hide in LYE for at least a day beforehand…may have even been a couple. Probably about 1.5 cups of pure lye in 10-12 gallons of water. There must be more to the story (there always is), and I’m trying to find someone who has seen that part of the story before so they can tell me how it goes from here =)

Now

We have an elk hide still soaking in the same brains, it looks much better..hopefully we’ll get to see it soon. Back to PaleoPlanet I guess, thankgod for PaleoPlanet.