Can I Still Use This Rawhide?

[nokiddin]

About 3 years ago, i stretched a hide, scraped all the hair off, soaked it and then cut it into a 145 foot long strip. Since then, the rawhide has been hanging in the tack room in a dry place, but has been frozen in the winter. I am just wondering if some of the people who know about rawhide could tell me if i could still cut big strings from this and braid a reata. I assume this hide won't be the best of quality but I am thinkin it will be a good practice run on building a reata.

Any tips on stuff I should do before cutting into strings, or before braiding to get better rawhide? Bruce Grants book always talks about soaping the rawhide with saddle soap, does anyone do that? is it necessary?

[megabit]

I think the hide should be ok from what you described. How wide is your 145' string? For a reata you need 4 strings about 1/4" wide and between 85' - 100' long. That should give you a 60'+ rope, so if you can only get one 1/4" sting out of what you have I think it will be a short reata, but would still be good practice. You could use it for pigging strings or bosal cores.

[curlyjo]

I was given some wide rough cut string just like that and tried to make honda string out of it. After soaking I went split it and the top grain cracked so bad I decided to maybe use it for cores only. Try soaking and splitting first and then you can tell if it will work. I'm with Megabit. You're about 300' short of reata string. Use it to braid cores and get some fresher hides for projects. Brad

[nokiddin]

The strip is 2 inches wide, 145' (if I remember right, but its at least 120). I had cut it originally for a reata, so I planned it out so I would have enough to cut it into 1/4" strings. Some of the strip is probably a little thin for a reata, probably went too much into the belly, So that might make it less uniform I guess, and not as strong.

Does anyone out there use cores for reatas? If so what is it?

Or is a four string round braid without core sufficient?

[megabit]

Four stands of rawhide with no core is a traditional reata. I think CurlyJo is sugesting you use this for bosal cores. I like his idea of trying to split it first before you put lots of work into the string. That should give you a fair idea of where you are.