Talk:Brain Tanning (Timberbee)
From the Quicksilver Metaweb.
TImberBee? - Can you give us some insight as to materials used in tanning? Victorians used pure which is a polite term for dog turds... * The Sinder name comes from Schindler which meant Skinner. As near as I can tell though - we've been a rabbinical clan for 400 years. My Dad's uncle, Dad and I being the only technical lads...
- Sparky 18:21, 2004 Jan 13 (PST)
Sparky,
The material I used was strictly brains, and then smoke at the end to fix it (Though you could, and I have, leave it white, but a buckskin in that state is very fragile, water on the hide will quickly revert it back into a rawhide like state).
Every thing before that was pure elbow grease.
There are some very good write ups out there, and I will try and either find some in the public domain, get a friend to do a one, or do one myself and seek a great deal of proofreading. It's been a number of years since I've done a hide, and I've no hands on experience with wet scraping, though, what I've seen has blown me away.
I never heard about the dog turds before, I'm not sure how that could be applied :D. The modern European methods I'm aware of use tanin (such as from oak barks, particularly White oak species), alum, or other chemical means to actualy alter the structure of the leather, which, from what I understand, brains does not really do.
Skinning is a Huge element in tanning :), not just for the obvious reason, but that a well skinned hide is easier to flesh, is less likely to tear under the stress of being stretched, scraped and then staked (at the end). That's especially true of some of the thinner hides, such as domestic sheep. A well skinned hide also has less unneccesary rips and cuts to begin with.
And... I reckon every family needs technical people :D timberbee 18:35, 13 Jan 2004 (PST)
Heh, the world has enough Rabbis for now. Neal hints at the muck used in tanning. Ben Franklin is the son of a candlemaker which used tallow. Terry Prachett's The Truth has a recycler who makes money from discarded items. Even Enoch tells Clarke the apothecary to save up his urine. - Sparky 18:46, 2004 Jan 13 (PST) scratchpad