Advice For Making Rawhide

[millwright]

I am going to flesh, slip hair, and stretch my first hide this weekend. I bought it yesterday from the slaughter house and put it in a freezer. Any tips on fleshing the hide? I planned on hanging it up and fleshing it. Would I be better off with laying it over a post or board (my version of fleshing beam) to flesh it? I plan on heating it in a barrel of hot water like KAW's tutorial to slip the hair. It looks like, from what I can tell, the hides I've seen posted have been trimmed before stretching. What's the rule of thumb on trimming the junk hide (where/what is the junk hide) and when is the best time to trim it? Do you need to flesh it before you can tell where to trim? I'm curious as to how long it would take to cure here in eastern Oklahoma too? I know this isn't the best time of year to do this but I'd rather not wait 'til spring to make rawhide.

I've heard/read that you should cut your circles from areas where the hide is even/consistent thickness. Are there general areas where the hide is even?

Any other advice tips are welcomed and appreciated.

[millwright]

Well, I ruined it. I guess I left it too long in the water, or maybe something to do with leaving it in the freezer over night, but it started to get hard and curl/wrinkle on the edges, had a cooked look to it. I will get another hide and try the lime method. That looks more forgiving to me than the hot water method.

I never saw anything about trimming the belly or anything in other posts I've been reading so I was just going to leave it as is. Bret

[curlyjo]

Millwright, maybe I can help out a little. Take the fresh hide and trim off the belly. When I get a hide from a down cow or whatever, I just take the neck, down low on the shoulder, along the base of the ribs, around low on the butt, back low along the base of the ribs again and back up to the neck. What I try to do is skin in front of the ears and cut all the way around the animal. Then hook the head to a tree or hitch on a pickup and hook a chain around the ears and pull the hide off with another pickup. No knife marks. That leaves the belly on the cow. Then throw it over a barrel or large round post and get all the meat and flesh you can off. The more you get off, the more and easier the hair will slip. 1/2 a garbage can of water with a large coffee can of lime and stir whenever you can. A lid will keep it warmer. Check to see if the hair is slipping easily, then throw over the barrel or whatever and slide the hair off with a flat stick. The warmer the weather, the faster it will slip. Then hose off both sides and put in a container with 1 gallon of vinegar and enough water to cover overnite. Pull out and hose off again and put in stretcher and check for more flesh and meat. Let it dry in the stretcher in the shade. Now the work begins! Brad

[millwright]

Many thanks Brad. Sounds like a good way to skin a downed cow and leave the belly. You were describing how you skin them without a knive and it reminded me of how a friend of mine says he skins his deer. He gets the hide started enough to get a small rock, about 1.5" diameter, under the inside of the hide, then ties a rope around the rock and hide from the outside, and pulls the hide with a truck. If I get the chance I'm going to trim one like you described and will definately use the lime method to slip the hair next time. Thanks for the reply, Bret.

[brycew74]

if you find the lime method does not work for you you can also streach the hide with the hair on and scrape it with a knife or sprinkle dry ashes on the hair side and scrape the hair off with a stick, these are my prefered methods

[millwright]

Might do that too brycew74. Won't hurt to dry two hides, different methods, at the same time. Twice as much hide too! Bret

[acox4t4]

There is also pictures and explanation of how to do it in the sticky notes at the top of this forum.

[millwright]

Those are the instructions I used to ruin it. I stretched one Tuesday, hair and all. Maybe by spring it'll be dry and I can scrape the hair off.

Edited November 17, 2014 by millwright

[bucksnort]

Millwright, The dry ash method works well & preserves the color of the hide. I will also sometimes clip the hair & not scrape the hair until after I have cut, split & cornered my strings. Only leaves a small amount on the main part of the string to scrape. As long as you get the hair all to an even length it doesn't seem to create any problems with wetting & tempering. If you plan to try the dry ash method you don't want to clip, the longer hair creates more grab. Hang in there, we've all ruined a few. Buck

[rcsaddles]

Don't listen to Buck. Some of us have ruined more than a few! His advise is good, I was only talking about the last statement.

[bucksnort]

You got me, I may have fudged it a little. With our chosen art form you always have to kill another cow.

[rgerbitz]

Been awhile since I've had a chance to get on here. Been even longer since I have had an oppurtunity to ruin a hide. I know I have thrown away more hides than I really care to admit to. Thanks to alot of people willing to suffer my ignorace I have picked up on some key peices of info. They are as follows:

- The best rawhide comes from a skinny animal

- Regardless of your method of dehairing and drying the more fat that is in/on the hide the more interference you will have to the process.

- The chemist say that liming works from the flesh side. The lime penetrates through fat slowly, which if the fat and connective tissue isn't thouroughly removed will make for uneven hair removal. Or in some of my cases, a hide that was useless in some areas with hair firmly attached in others.

- If using hides from feeder steers/heifers it is best to flesh as soon as possible. The more body heat in the hide the better. If using a old cow, not to big of deal.

- If drying a hide to scrap the hair once dried the more even you can get the hide prior to complete dry down the better. Fleshing is important, some will take a sander to the hide

before completely dry to thin down some of the thicker areas to get a more even drying process. You will find if to much fat. or if the hide is thicker, that if not dryed evenly the hide will

dry with wrinkles in it making it very difficult to remove the hair without damaging the top grain of the hide. Winter hair on animals can be an issue if not clipped of prior to drying.

- Sodium Sulfide will slip hair very effectively. It is a mess. It smells horrible. Your wife may make you sleep in the barn for a night or two till the smell wears off of you. But, In 30

minutes to an hour you can have a hide that is as slick as a babies back side. (Thank you Rod and Denise)

- Red haired animals make the prettiest rawhide. Doesn't matter which method used. The farther away from black you can get the better looking the rawhide.

- Chiggers suck. Nothing worse than spending a bunch of time fleshing, stirring, slipping (sleeping in the barn) streching a hide to find that bugs and barb wire have had their way with

the best parts of your hide.

- If dry scraping a hide a solid peice of iron with 4 perfectly square and sharp edges can mean the difference between being able to get out of bed the next day on your own or needing a

crane to lift you out. Lay it over a barrel or post and sit on it. You can do it in the frame standing up but I'd rather sit and work whenever possible.

- The first lesson to learn in making rawhide is how to get and maintain a sharp edge on any tool you will be using. That tution is best paid with books and videos, not scars and stiches.

- The second lesson is temper. If it not tempered right don't work with it. To hard and blades will bend and break. To wet the hide will strech and look like crap once braided. Just right

the heavens will open and Dorrance himself will sit by your side and tell you stories of days gone by as you effortlessly cut the perfect strands. Perfect temper takes feel, the only way

to learn feel is to find out what feels bad and what feels good. If you are just getting started and have no one near by to learn from to feel what perfect is you are going to be throwing

away some hide. It's OK there are thousands of feet of rawhide being born everyday.

- Maintaining temper while working. Feel will tell you when you need to add water or let dry out a bit. You can't braid for 2 hours straight and not have a plan on how to maintain the

perfect temper. Spray bottles, plastic bags, soaps, potions, barrels, damp towels, humidors every one has its place depending on the current humidity of the day.

There are many more tips that can be added to this list and hopefully many of you will do so. If not for the advise I gleaned from those willing to share I would have given up on braiding altogether. I am a long way from being inducted into the TCAA, but some day I may get the perfect hide, not ruin it, have my tution payed in full, and be able to bring to bear the knowledge and skill of those willing to share and create something worthy of recognition by my peers.

Best of luck,

Rob

[curlyjo]

Excellent tutorial, rgerbitz. The only thing I can add that might help is to measure and write down everything you try in the entire process of from green hide to length of string for braiding. It's a lot easier to have a reference than try to remember what you did last time. And make your strings a little long. When you cut them off, take them outside and throw in the garbage away from your work area. It's a lot easier to cut a little off than splice! Nothing more fun then an 8 strand nosebutton 1 1/2" to short. Write it down. Even if it didn't work. Brad

[rcsaddles]

Very nice, Rob. When I have a few minutes or a half hour, I will post how I do the rawhide from start to finish just as a comparision and as more info.

Sorry for the arguement, Buck. We have to make our own fun here in Montana. You just opened the door for me.

[rcsaddles]

My rawhide teacher was Mary Fields from Bonanza, Oregon. I will explain the way she taught me, and how I do things. It is open for discussion and I wll say now, take whatever advise and ideas you can get and adjust them to work for you.

I guess I should say that when I skin a cow, I will skin from the top of the shoulder, down to the belly line on each side and up in front of the tailhead. Kind of a big circle.

If I take the hide off the critter, I will lay it out on the ground with the hair side down. I will give it an hour or two or whatever it takes to start getting some firmness to it. I then use a utility knife and start in the middle of the hide and cut a strap about 1 1/4 inch wide. I just kind of corkscrew out. Of course you need to be on the lookout for a brand or two or three, as well as any other blemishes that will affect the quality and intergity of the rawhide. If the hide is already dry, I will soak it and tehn start cutting my strap. The reason for the utility knife is that I can change the blade often.

Once the strap is cut, I will tie one end to a post and stretch it as far as I can and tie to another post. I will then tie a rope in the middle of the strap, which can be as long as 140 feet, and pull it over to one side and tie it to something solid. This is to take more stretch out of the rawhide. I then use my pocket knife to scrape the hair off the hide. this can take up to four or five hours of scraping. If the strap is too wide, as it dries, it will curl and be a bugger to scrape.

Once the hair is all scraped off, I can either store the strap or soak it and split it. If splitting, I put that strap in a barrel of water for a day or so until it is the consistency of spaghetti. I will then run it through my splitter taking a paper thin slice at a time. I might have to pull it through the splitter up to 10 or 12 times. Don't try and hurry this process. If you get carried away and think you are doing great and can go faster, that is when the strap will curl and you will cut through it. That, is experience speaking.

After splitting, I usually hang the strap up so that it is not touching itself. Usually in the shade or out of sunlight to start the tempering process. I usually hang it over an old clothes drying rack, running ut back and forth across it. As the strap starts to dry, the edges will become hard and the middle will still be flexible. When it gets like this, I put the strap in a plastic bag for a couple of hours to "mellow" or temper and it will all come back to an even moisture content. Usually at this point, the hide is ready to cut string. As Rob mentioned, when it is ready and cutting great, there is nothing better than just cutting that string.

This may sound strange but... when I start to cut my string, I take a ver narrow string off first to make a good straight edge. I will be taking this off of the "inside" cut of the strap. Yes, you can tell which is the inside fo the cut and wwhich is the outside. I always cut from teh inside to the outside.

Remember, this is the way I was taught and the way I make my rawhide. I am not saying it is the only way or the best way to make rawhide.

When I first met Mary, she was in her 70's. I told her I was looking for a young lady that could teach me everything I needed to know about rawhide. She laughed and said she cuold teach me all the mistakes. I often asked "why" on the techniques she used. She always told me she had tried different ways and this was the way she found that worked the best but I could try it another way. If you don't know, Mary Fields is in teh Bruce Grant Encyclopedia of Leather and Rawhide Braiding. She passed away the summer of 2013. I believe she was in her 90's. She and I bacame pretty good friends and she even signed by Bruce Grant book for me.

[bucksnort]

Great job guys. There's a lot of knowledge packed into a small space. Joe, I definitely set myself up for that one. Rob, could you expand on the Sodium Sulfide when you get a chance? Thanks, Buck

[millwright]

Yeah, Buck, lots of good information. I was wondering if I use dry ash and scrape the hair, will it hurt the hair if I leave some unscraped and clip it? I'm not sure if the ash will bother the clipped hair. I read somewhere that some people leave the short clipped hair on the strings and braid with it. I might leave a shoulder or something clipped to try and see how this looks. I would like to hear more about the sodium sulfide too.

Thanks for the detailed description Rob and Joe. Rob what size steel square piece do you use to scrape the hair off using the dry scrape method? I thought I might try to scrape with it using the dry ash method too.

Joe when do you let the hide dry/cure to become rawhide? When it's pulled and stretched? You take the hair off first or let it dry then scrape the hair off. How much faster do you figure the hide dries/cures being cut in the strip rather than left whole? Thanks, Bret.

[bucksnort]

Bret, The ash won't harm the hair you want to keep on. I would clip the areas you want to save before putting the ash on. The ash will get in the hair & be hard on clipper blades. I've always thought that if I was making a piece of equipment for myself with a hide I had clipped short that I probably wouldn't bother scraping it. The hair will wear off though, so it's not a permanent look. Buck

[oltoot]

Just throwing some more stuff in the pot. When rawhide reatas were more common, it was thought to be preferable to get the reata braided with the moisture from the critter still in the hide and to add little or no more. To accomplish this meant stretching the hide in the shade, fleshing vigorously, sometimes clipping the hair if it was especially wooly, stripping wide sogas, stretching them and then letting them get nearly dry, then first shaving the remaining flesh, then the hair, then cutting the final strings then braiding. No long breaks to go to the fair with that method. I used a modified approach for using gear for awhile. I would stretch, flesh, cut ~2" strips then stretch and dry them. Come time to make something I would scrape a string, wet and temper it then cut my strings to use from that, splitting where necessarry. Those little puppies were sure enough stout and sported a bit of a "punchy" look where a little red or black fuzz remained in a spot or two.

[curlyjo]

I heard this from Lige Langston from Surprise Valley area of Ca. When he first started making strings, he would cut wide string and stretch out and dry. Then he would put some old bottles in a sack and break into pieces, reach in with gloves on and get a piece and scrape the hair with the broken glass. When it dulled up he'd just grab another piece of broken glass and go on scraping. Always had a sharp tool. And if you end up with a little bit of hair on a finished string, just rub with sandpaper and buff it off. Brad

[rgerbitz]

12 inch planner blades work well. Usually have to buy in sets of three, but they are made of good steel and 4 sides. once they are tuned up you can scrap one hide without having to stop and sharpen anything.

[acox4t4]

Whow you all are good at motivating a person to try again. I've personally ruined 3 attempts. First by hanging out to dry and then scrape, bad idea to do that when fly's still flying -- maggot mess. Second time, two much lime turned it into a mushy mess, and third time not enough lime or didn't wait long enough but had in bucket with lime for close to two weeks and gave up. But have really been wanting to try the fourth attempt and you all have made me motivated enough to try. Thanks for all the time you take to help us out with answering questions and posting your pictures of the gear you make.

[gbsbullet]

I was looking around Google trying to find some instructions on how to make French Waxed Calf when I came across a Google book that goes into a lot of detail on tanning a hide. I didn't read through the whole thing but the pages I did read laid out some pretty good instruction on how to prepare a hide for tanning. I figure if you adjusted the later instructions you would end up with some nice rawhide.

http://books.google.com/books?id=RaZRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA293&lpg=PA293&dq=how+to+make+french+waxed+calf&source=bl&ots=ygQFHZFWgm&sig=07K3xih6R4oTdB-kcGYwtAK5wJQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mUR-VKyMIYXuoATy2oKoBA&ved=0CE4Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=how%20to%20make%20french%20waxed%20calf&f=false

try that again.

http://books.google.com/booksid=RaZRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA293&lpg=PA293&dq=how+to+make+french+waxed+calf&source=bl&ots=ygQFHZFWgm&sig=07K3xih6R4oTdB-kcGYwtAK5wJQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mUR-VKyMIYXuoATy2oKoBA&ved=0CE4Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=how%20to%20make%20french%20waxed%20calf&f=false

Well they don't want me to post the link so if you go to Google Books and search for "how to make french waxed calf" you should come up with the information I was referring to

[WinterBear]

Try this for a link gbsbullet:

http://books.google.com/books?id=RaZRAAAAYAAJ&dq=inauthor%3A%22Hippolyte%20Dussauce%22&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q&f=false Or

http://books.google.com/books?id=RaZRAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA293&ots=ygQFHZFWgm&dq=how%20to%20make%20french%20waxed%20calf&pg=PA293#v=onepage&q=how%20to%20make%20french%20waxed%20calf&f=false

[millwright]

My hide's been drying for about 25 days and seems like it's dried out. Does this sound right?

If you cut circles from the whole hide, where is the hide typically the same thickness? What areas, what size, and how many rounds do you normally get from a hide? What area is considered the best quality?

I read on a post where someone cuts 10" rounds and stores them 'til they need strings for a project. How much string would you get from one round? Would you cut the whole hide into 10" rounds?

Has anyone cut soga strings length wise of the hide like Gail Hought does? How does this work for having more consistent width compared to rounds? What are the benefits of this method rather than the rounds?

I didn't trim the belly from the hide while it was green. Is there something to look for to know how far up to trim off so I don't get any stretchy hide? How do you tell if it's going to stretch even before you cut the strings?

I'm sure most of the answers depend on personal preference and trial and error, but I like hearing the voice of experience. Wish my teenage boys liked to hear it too! Bret