Bleached Rawhide

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

We have a customer wanting exposed, bleached rawhide on a reproduction type tree. Can anyone tell us about how it is made (since we make our own rawhide normally) and what is different about bleached hide than regular rawhide other than the white color.

Thanks.

Edited August 11, 2008 by Rod and Denise Nikkel

[rdb]

If you haven't got any answers by Im yet, I'll throw these clues out for you to work with.

I've never tanned anything other than snake, but I did find these links while doing a little research on your question:

This site has a lot of info on rawhide, and mentions the French technique of "babiche" for bleaching/whitening the hide. I'm not sure any of us would go this far...

"Some tribes cured rawhide with an application of urine. It is said that a washing in urine before drying creates a bleached white color. This has been called by the French, babiche , when it is cut into lacing. In most journals, babiche and lace are terms used interchangeably with no reference to the urine treatment. I used a gallon of urine on a half cowhide recently, but with no noticeable results. The ammonia in the urine should act as a bleach, but in my experiment, it only made a smell. "

http://home.acceleration.net/clark/PaperVu/rawhide.html

Then on this site, in addition to the lime, there is an additional soak in Tartar and Baking soda which they say gives a good white translucency.

"Rinse the hide under the running faucet until all traces of hair are gone and wring it gently several times to flush out the lime residue.

Fill the tub again, adding a small can of cream of tarter and about half a box of baking soda. Let the hide soak a couple more hours in this solution, then rinse thoroughly again several more times.

This will give the hide a white almost translucent color and finish removing all traces of the lime, which can break down the cells of the hide."

http://www.aaanativearts.com/article379.html

On this tanning chemistry site the commenter says.

"The traditonal white leather is alum tanned. Formaldehyde can also give a rather white leather (other aldehydes tend to give a yellow cast to the leather). Personally, I prefer alum fixed with citric acid (1/3 stoicimetric quantity that would be necessary for Al citrate). Once a commercial product in Italy called Neoconc was actually marketed that was a "citrate masked" alum. Perhaps the most beautiful and perfect white material (notice I did not say leather) is rawhide dehydrated with acetone. Amazing stuff!"

There are several other good comments in there too. THIS may be the place to ask a tanning question. Try joining and ask.

http://www.leatherchemists.org/forum/forum...;PN=1&TPN=1

Hopefully, one of our in-house experts will chime in with specific answers from their own experience, at least I tried to get the ball rolling...lol

[rawhide1]

Rod and Denise

I'm by no means an expert but I've always been told the rawhide is a lot weaker when it is bleached. Not much help but it's all I've got.

Mike

[rgerbitz]

I am no expert either, but last fall I bleached a hide with clorox. I put the clorox in with the lime and let it sit like I usually would and it seemed to work out all right. This is the only picture I have of anything I made with the hide.

Hope this helps,

Rob Gerbitz

[Kevin]

When I was in saddle school, we used peroxide to bleach rawhide for cantle bindings and horn rims. It was thirty years ago though, and I can't remember if we bleached fresh rawhide before it dried too much or if we were rewetting it after it dried.

Kevin

[Rod and Denise Nikkel]

Thanks for the answers. We had also heard that bleached rawhide is weaker than normal and that we shouldn't use it, so we never have. In this case we are considering it if we can find out enough information about it. That link you gave us rbd looks very good for getting information. Need to do some reading there.

We were thinking we would just experiment with a bit of scrap rawhide to see what results we get. Rob, what type of concentration of bleach did you put with your lime? Kevin, do you remember concentrations and times for the peroxide? Our rawhide stays wet so you would think these would still have an effect.

[rgerbitz]

Hey there R and D,

I can't say for sure what the concetration was. So this is just a guess. I had about 25 - 30 gallons of water and dumped in about 6- 10 ounces of Clorox, or 3 glugs. Sorry that is about as scientific as I get.

Rob