Creating Woolly Mammoth Leather (an ongoing project)

[Themammothproject]

First time caller, long time listener and very excited to tap into the wealth of knowledge here. (long post ahead)

So this is a project that has been multiple years in the works, but now I am getting deeper and getting my hands wet with it moreso.

I was able to acquire a number of panels of Woolly Mammoth hides pulled from the Russian permafrost where they had remained frozen for more than 10,000 years. They were then simply dried before sending over to me. I also have a panel of Woolly Rhino. These have some hair still on the dermis/epidermis side, and are uniform in thickness letting me know that the flesh side is at the natural separation of loose connective tissue. 

Thus far, I've experimented with a roughly 3" x 10" slice. Sawed it off, washed/rehydrated in water and then put it into a circulating lime bath for about a week before rinse and then vegetable tanning in a myrobalan solution before rinsing again and drying. This decreased the weight of the pieces significantly, they are now odorless (haha) but rock hard and without any visible surface grain.

I've recently purchased a leather splitter as well which I'll play with this initial test run and rehydrate the "leather" and split them to see if they're more flexible.

My initial questions, and I am very much open to everyone's thoughts as well overall:

- These hides are OLD of course, and I don't see a surface grain. When I review pictures of elephant hides being harvested, and also having read some research papers on woolly mammoth hide makeup versus elephant, it is clear that they are almost identical. But modern elephant hides are thinner when I purchase/have worked with them. Should I be splitting the rehydrated hide first to ~2-3mm

- If the finished "leather" is so stiff yet light, are the remaining fibers after this initial liming/veg tan process more of a "mesh" that I should think about either compressing to make functional, and/or compressing and adding a binder to support it so it doesn't pull/fray apart and keep it flexible?

 Just to give you some idea, the thickness is around 2cm.

 

 

Edited September 23 by Northmount
OP's request

[Themammothproject]

I'll spare you all the pics of liming and the myrobalan veg tan, but here's the end product after those steps and letting it air dry.

The two sample pieces are stiff and light and odorless. Seem to be denser than when the "raw" hide was rehydrated. At that initial stage they felt almost spongy. You could push them and they would compress and them bounce back.

 

 

[Northmount]

Interesting that hides are being recovered from mammoths that have been buried for centuries.

There were reported sightings of mammoths in North America in the 1700s or early 1800s.  Sometimes we wonder about facts or made up stories.