A Couple Of New (To Me) Ideas

[bucksnort]

I tried a couple of new things that worked pretty well & seemed worth sharing. I fairly often end up skinning my hides off & wanted to try a technique I saw a few years ago in a hide plant. I put a section of copper tubing on an air compressor blow gun & put a point on it like a hypodermic needle. You poke it under the skin in an ear & blow the hide up like a balloon (still on the animal of course). It separates the hide from the carcass with no meat attached & makes it super easy to skin off.

The second thing came about from necessity. I was given a really nice hide for pick up at a slaughter house. When I arrived to pick it up, I discovered that it had been salted for about 1/2 hour. I took a chance & washed it down really well & took it home. I knew the hair wouldn't come off very easy from the salting & was leery about liming it, so I stretched & dried it, clipped the hair short, but didn't scrape it until I cut & cornered my strings. Worked well & I didn't have to scrape anything I wasn't using. Salting for the short time didn't seem to ruin the rawhide. Buck

[rcsaddles]

Thanks for that information, Buck. I have always wondered about the air thing. I might have to try it one day.

[SilverBear]

Seems I remember Bruce Grant having a recipe for rawhide that called for salting the hide first. I will check when I get home from work.

[bucksnort]

Joe, I liked it, If you paired it up with Brad's method of pulling the hide off it would be a real snap. SilverBear, Grant does have a method which uses salt which seems odd because he also says that salt hides are no good for rawhide. I think that maybe salting rawhide was kind of common place in Tx. I don't think the salt helped the hide, but it doesn't seem to have hurt it. It was only on for a short time. Buck

[rcsaddles]

Mary Fields taught me to take the hide off the cow and just throw it out on the ground, flesh side up. Give it enough time to start to firm up and then cut it into a strap. I wonder if the salt helps to pull some moisture out and speeds up the process a little? One day I may have to try it when I get a good supply of rawhide built up. Would probably work better on a slaughtered hide than an old starving cow.