#brain tanning

[kingpretty]

taxidermy info has so much accidentally hilarious stuff. I once read smth like "nearly every animal has enough brains in it to tan it's own hide. Except humans. Humans used their brains to learn how to tan skins with other animal's brains"

I don't even think it quite makes sense or is true but I love that, I think abt it so much

[neat-deadandlive-things]

A bison hide 4 days into the brain tanning process. Despite my hands, back, and arms being so sore and having most of the helpers back out at the last minute, it's been good. Next I'm doing something much much smaller.

[econator]

I've not seen anything from you for a few weeks. Hope you're OK, wherever you are.

I'm alive. I submitted my research paper, and then got really into sorting out my lamby skins*, ready for making slippers. I'm dropping a pair of skins off at the leatherworker's on Wednesday to be made into a bag and two pairs of slippers. I needed to comb all the tiny little sticky thorns out of the slipper-lamby's coat, which has been hours of work with a fine-toothed comb. I'll be back in circulation in a few days.

*I'm being self-sufficient for shoes, and recycling skins from my local lamb farmer, and giving the lambies a second life in a family. Sorry if that triggers vegans. I felt called to shaman for Allister's lambies.

[unidentifiedmammal]

A bit of an unguided ramble, but i recently began looking into sources of tannins to tan hides. I'm trying out a sort of hybrid egg tan and tannin tan where i do the emulsified fats first, then replace the smoking step with a tannin bath.

Ive tried it with a scrap of gray fox hide and oak galls, and it went pretty well. But for my newest thing I'm gonna focus on, I gathered a bunch of water oak acorns. They're of the black oak group, which means they're higher in tannins and less palatable than the white oak group. Which is good for tanning, of course!

I gathered a large jarful, crushed them up, and then boiled them. I poured the water off into a bigger pot, and then boiled them a second time in new water. I added a silver cross fox fur scrap that i had tanned using eggs, but was in need of further treatment.

The next day i added in the second boil of the acorns to get any straggling tannins into the bath, and made sure to stir it. So far so good.

However, on the third or fourth day, i went to go get it off the deck and rinse/dry it out. I reached in, and lo and behold, it was slimy! All the water was viscous, and it smelled like yeast and alcohol. I guess it had started fermenting?

I took it out, and despite being obviously slippery, it seemed intact. I hosed it off in the driveway, which took longer than the quick dip in a bucket i had planned, and everything seemed fine! The leather was brown and the fur was still intact, it just took forever to get the slime out.

I dried out the hide by leaving it in the sun in a driveway, a railing, back of a chair, and eventually hanging it on the mantle once it was mostly dry. The leather was soft, the color was even, and the fur was clean.

And just to focus on the fur, it seems so much fluffier than it was before! I don't know if i'm seeing things, but it seems to have cleaned and revitalized it, maybe because of the soak in alcohol and acorn fats?

Anyways, what i think happened is that the boiling extracted starches along with the tannins and oils, the starches broke down and got fermented by wild yeast, thus producing alcohol. The acorn oil and alcohol could've even helped clean off the fur!

Ive also heard of cold leaching acorns to extract the tannins in order to make bread with the resulting flour. Which (i hypothesize) would leave more of the starches and oils in the nut part than crushing and boiling. But the stuff i read made no distinction between hot and cold leaching in the context of tanning.

Do i know all this for sure? No, but i kinda wanna test it out at some point soon. cold leaching vs hot leaching vs straight water vs nothing. I'm also curious if anyone else has messed around with acorn tanning before. I'm pretty new to it so it'd be cool to learn more!

(it also makes the second time ive accidentally made alcohol, the first one coming from wild rice)

[sunrockmoss-blog]

Scraping a moose hide for hide smoking.  

[blackbackedjackal]

Hello! I've been a huge fan of your blog even before I started using tumblr, you're so knowledgeable and friendly about everything relating to VC and I just really appreciate it, especially as a newbie to how it all works. I was wondering though, I've seen several videos on "brain-tanning" (using the brains of an animal to tan the hide) and I wanted to know what your thoughts are on it? I've considered using that method but I wanted to know what your thoughts are on it :) Thank you!

Thank you so much ;o;!! 

I’ve touched on this a bit before but brain tanning is not the best method to go about tanning for beginners, and it is not meant for hair-on hides. Brain tanning is probably the oldest form of hide preservation that was used to make clothing, bags, and other utilitarian items. So if you intend to tan pelts that have the fur on the hide for wallhangers and things, this is not the method to use! It takes a lot more effort to do then it may seem, including a safe outdoor space to smoke the hide.

How to Brain Tan

Step one:

After the animal has been skinned, carefully scrape off ALL of the fat and meat on the skin side. This is generally done with a fleshing beam and fleshing knife.

Step two:

Soak the hide for up to 3 days in water. This allows the fur to loosen up and slip off the hide.

Step three:

After the hide has been soaked, the fur side must be scraped and grained with a fleshing knife. Scraping is to remove all of the fur, follicles, and grain (the outer layer of the skin). Any grain left on the hide will keep the brain from fully penetrating the skin, so this must be done very thoroughly.

Step four:

The epithelial tissue must be completely scraped as well. This is the layer of skin the on the inside of the hide that plumps up during the three day soak. Once again, if this layer is not completely scraped, the brain will not penetrate the hide.

Step five:

The hide must be thoroughly wrung out to remove as much moisture as you can. this can be done by anchoring one side of the hide and twisting it until the moisture completely drips out.  

Step six:

The brain of the animal is placed in warm water and mixed until it is the consistency of a ‘brain milkshake’. Once the brains are thoroughly mixed, the hide should be placed in a tub with the brain solution, and the solution should be massaged into the entire hide. 

Step seven:

After the hide has been brained it must be broken in to soften it. This can be done over the back of a chair or edge of a table. The goal is to break in the hide until the skin is flexible even while damp.

Step eight:

Final step in the process. The hide must be hung over a fire and smoked. This preserves the skin and adds a bit of water resistance. Different types of wood will also give the hide a different color and smell when finished (example: Douglas fir will give the hide a brown tint, while sage gives the hide a yellow tint).

Phew, so yeah brain tanning is a much longer and more complicated process then using chemical tans, and has a specific function for making hides that are meant for clothing, waterskins, moccasins, etc. It’s a very hands on method and it meant for large hides like deer and such which is a massive undertaking for someone’s first time tanning. It’s a method I would love to try myself one day. I have a local friend who used this method to make beautiful traditional moccasins and coats, but it’s not a good beginner method, especially if you’re looking to do fur-on tanning. Defiantly not trying to discourage anyone from trying it either, there’s just simpler methods out there!

I hope this helped you anon! If you have any more questions just hit me up ;o;

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[sky-yote]

Alright, first adventure in brain tanning. We'll see how this goes. I've got the hide smeared full of brain water, I'll let it sit overnight and start breaking it tomorrow morning. I'm concerned there's too much moisture on the hide; I used 1 part brain to 3 parts water per @quietmagpie's tutorial, and covered it with a damp towel. The skin wasn't completely dry before I started, I had it hanging all afternoon and the fur dried perfectly but the skin was still sticky moist. (i also think I did a less than adequate job of fleshing, the skin is so thin I nearly tore through it a couple times and still didn't get the membrane off) If it doesn't end up tanning properly can I stretch it and sun dry it and try again with beef brain? Or should I salt it and get some tanning chemicals?

[quietmagpie]

If you don't mind me asking, where did you get the hook you use to get brains out of skulls? And what other kinds of tools could you use to get brains out?

The hook I use is actually a dental pick my mom gave me back when I was doing sculpting. These are readily available at craft stores in the sculpting section. Failing that, a simple piece of stiff wire bent into a hook will do. I recommend spring steel from old bike tires or pieces of hubcap rim wire (often found on the side of the road)–both are strong and readily available for free.