The word "tannins" has come to refer to those chemicals that give a bitter taste on our tongue Strong tea, coffee, red wine, unripened fruit, for example.īut on with the lesson. They soaked oak bark in water to make a bitter solution that helped dissolve the membranes on the hides. I bet I'm the only Latin speaking Indian you're ever going to meet!!Īnd because I'll probably never get another chance, I'll continue to elucidate. Hence the verb tannare meaning "to make leather". In ancient Rome a tannum was a leather maker. Kavanaugh who spent five years of his life drumming Latin into my teenage head, I can tell you that the root of the English word tanning comes from the Latin word tannum. The emulsion helps break down the membranes that have to be removed before the hide can be used for clothing and footwear.Īnd with a nod to Mr. Just What is Brain Tanning?īrain tanning is a rigorous process that at one point involves rubbing an emulsified solution of animal brain tissue and water into a wet rawhide. Brain tanning is labour intensive, sometimes gory, often smelly and generally not for the feint of heart.
ALL ABOUT TANNING RABBIT HIDES HOW TO
If you have a hide or two in your freezer and are looking for step by step instructions on how to brain tan, you've come to the right place. I’m sad that Bandit died, but I’m glad that we were able to honor her death in this small way and keep a part of her that will be useful to us, even in her death.Brain tanning hides is a lot of work, but you end up with an exceptionally soft hide that remains pliable even after it gets wet. I’m trying to decide what I’m going to do with it. That’s okay though, now that it’s tanned, I can store it and finish it the next time I have the fireplace going. Otherwise, it will get hard again every time it gets wet. If it started to dry, I just got it a little wet again and kept going.Īt this point, you need to smoke it for 15 – 30 minutes to waterproof it. I rolled over the hide for 5-10 minutes every hour until I got it nice and soft. This looks like I’m rolling out the weirdest cookies ever. Then I got out my trusty tanning helper (aka the rolling pin). You can use the smaller pieces as cat toys. Make small cuts or you will end up chopping the whole thing to pieces. See how clean it is now? It’s still really wet though. It took me about 3 washes to get it really clean. The next morning, I washed off the hide really well to remove all of the dirt from the fur as well as the egg yolks from the hide. Make sure you don’t use hot water, you don’t want to scramble your eggs. The purpose of the wet towel is to keep the egg yolk mixture moist. Then you cover it with a wet towel and let it sit overnight. I smeared the egg yolks on the hide, trying to avoid the fur as much as possible. You could also use an animal brain instead of egg yolks, but… yuck. I also prepared a tanning mixture, using 4 egg yolks.
ALL ABOUT TANNING RABBIT HIDES SKIN
Every now and then I had to use a knife, but I mostly just peeled pieces off, little by little.Īfter I got as much meat, fat, and skin off of the hide as I could, I took it inside and laid it out. It was sort of like peeling off a layer of old glue. The next day, I started peeling off the dried skin, meat, and fat from the hide. So, DH (dear hubby) skinned her and I did my best to tan the hide and make it useable for us in the future.įirst, I obtained the hide, laid it fur side down outside, and covered it in salt. It might sound a little morbid, but she died of natural causes, she is livestock, and it’s silly to waste her fur because I’m feeling a little squeamish. We decided that before we disposed of her body, we would skin her. We were all sad that she died, she was a great rabbit. Last Monday, one of our rabbits Bandit-doe, was acting lethargic and not eating.
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