tanning rabbit hides with aluminum sulfate

#Tanning rabbit hides with aluminum sulfate skin#
#Tanning rabbit hides with aluminum sulfate free#

A tannery is the place where the skins are processed. Tanning is the process of treating skins and hides of animals to produce leather. Letha Oelz (You can contact Letha follow me at or ) I’ve heard some people use olive oil.TANNING LEATHER… (Textile – The process of tanning leather? Chrome/Vegetable/Natural) Stretch it out and tack it down until damp, then start breaking the fibers by rubbing it over something curvy like a log or a taut rope.Īt the end, you can apply a conditioning oil like neatsfoot oil. If your hide will be touching skin, you may want to neutralize again to remove irritating acids. Step five: neutralize and soften during drying

(Try for every few hours, or more realistically, twice a day). Leave your pelts in this solution and give them a swish every once in awhile. OR put your gloves on and add 1 cup of alum and 1 cup of salt per gallon of water Put your gloves on and put 8 oz of battery acid into another bucket of salty water (1 lb salt). When you first dunk it, it might sizzle a bit when baking soda reacts with the residual acid on the fur. I used half a box of baking soda in a gallon of water. Once it’s ready, give it a swish in neutralizing solution and leave it to soak for 15-20 minutes. If it’s gray, pickle it longer, and make sure your solution is nice and acidic.Ī day or more into this, you can take the hide back out and remove any remnants of flesh that are left. You can slice up a little bit and check to see if it’s whitened all the way through. It’ll be white not just on the surface where you can see it, but all the way through.

#Tanning rabbit hides with aluminum sulfate skin#

When your pelt is ready, the skin will be white. Microbial growth over time can change the pH of your solution. If you have a pH meter, keep an eye on the pH so it’s under 2.5. You can use a stick to mix, or be like me and just swish it around with the lid on.

Once added, give this mixture a swirl every once in awhile to keep the anaerobes from growing in there. Wait for this mixture to cool before adding your pelts. Add your vinegar or citric acid (3 tablespoons of citric acid, or equal parts vinegar and water: 1 gal vinegar per 1 gallon of water).

It doesn’t matter in which order you boil the water and add the salt just make sure your salt is pretty well dissolved. I’m not really exact in my measurements, but you’ll want maybe two gallons of water. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve made the cans of salt smaller lately to keep the price the same. If you have the old 32 oz cans, you can pour half of it into a big pot of water. To make pickling solution, boil water with 1 lb of salt. I do it because it helps the follicles tighten around hair, like an astringent. the salt keeps the skin from swelling up too much in solution, and helps keep most of the germs at bay. First you cover the skin with salt, then you add salt to each of your acid solutions. Salt: it’s important that you have lots of salt. For pickling, go with straight white vinegar or citric acid.įor tanning, you’ll need something like alum (ammonium aluminum sulfate), aluminum sulfate, or even battery acid from the automotive store (30-40% sulfuric acid). One box of arm & hammer will do fine for a rabbit.Īcid: you want a nice low pH to pickle your pelts. You’ll want to keep on hand an acid neutralizer as well for neutralizing between steps, as well as in case of any spills or mishaps.īaking soda: this is your neutralizer. Before you do this, you’ll pickle it in acid as well. Your tanning solution will be an acid dunk. When you’re ready to tan, put it in a container of water and rub off some of the salt in the water. Use regular or fine grain salt, not rock salt.

#Tanning rabbit hides with aluminum sulfate free#

If you’re not going to be able to put it into solution right away, store it in the freezer to keep it free of any germs. Salt (and optionally sprinkle Borax on) the whole thing. Scrape off as much of the meat as you can. It only works on rabbits and not other critters in my experience. This is one of those “whoa” moments the first time you do it. Neat trick: you can gut a rabbit by squeezing everything out of its butthole.