Advice For Making Rawhide

[bucksnort]

These measurements are off the head guesses & of coarse will vary with hide size. From the neck & tail come in about 8 to 10 inches (these pieces are ok for button strings), off the center of the back come down about 20 inches ( rest of this is scrap, too thin & stretchy). The oval left is your best rawhide. Some cut strings out of this & some, as I do, take a strip of about 4 inches out of the center of the back ( between grubs & the use of pour-on this rawhide sometimes isn't that good). I use it for bosal cores & such. I personally cut the rest into 10 inch squares & store it to cut into strings. When I get ready to use it I mark & cut a circle & cut a string a little over 1/4 wide & get about 25 feet, which will give me four 1/8 strings for reins. If you search Lacemaster, they have a lace calculator which is really accurate. Not always easy to tell thickness on a dry hide but with practice you can get squares with even thickness ( that center piece is usually pretty consistant & many will cut the entire piece into one long string & for reatas this is a necessity. Cutting strips would probably be OK for bosals or any shorter items, but wouldn't give you long enough strings for reins. This is just the way I prefer & there are a lot of other ways that produce equally good results (or better). Try them all & you'll come up with what works best for you & if your like most of us next week you'll be doing it differently. Buck

[millwright]

Hide number 3....down the tube. I thought I had this one figured out but it turned really cold here in Oklahoma and it froze. I didn't know you shouldn't let a green hide freeze when it's stretched out. Looks like some of it dried like it's supposed to, nice clear amber color, and the rest was white like it was stretched too much and broke the fibers.

I have my 4th stretched and out of the weather, so I'm feeling good about this. Maybe I'll finally be cutting some strings in a week or so.

I fleshed the last two with the grinder and wire wheel method and it works really well. I hope to try with a fleshing beam and knife sometime, but for now, I'm tickled to death to have this one fleshed and drying. Going to use the dry ash to get the hair off. Going to try the lime sometime too.

Got a call about a yearling colt someone had to put down and got that hide this weekend. I'll get it cleaned up and stretched in the next day or two. Does the dry ash method work for horse hide too? wooh, this has been quite an ordeal, think it'll work this time....I'm sure hoping. Bret

[millwright]

I have white patches/blotches showing up where it has already dried. Is it possible/easy to stretch the green hide too tight, then as it dries and contracts the fibers in the rawhide break? I've pulled hides 2,3 and 4 fairly tight in the hoop. Dang it!! Still not cutting any strings. This is crazy, it's just drying out a hide, how cotton pickin hard can it be! I haven't figured out how to resize pics so I can't get any on here. Who's got an idea?

[bucksnort]

Bret, Not sure what the white spots are. When I stretch hide I pull them as tight as I can & then tighten them again the next day. I think you'd be more likely to break your frame or string than stretch a hide too tight. Pics might help. When I resize I pick edit/organize in upper left corner, click on picture & it gives the option to resize. Buck

[millwright]

You were right Buck. It wasn't too tight. I think I was prematurely worried. I went ahead and scraped the hide today and it turned out fine. I have RAWHIDE! I think it looks pretty good. Thanks for all the help guys.

Hope to be posting some pics of some tack before long. Reins and headstall is first on the list. I'm trying copy/paste from facebook with some pics.

This is what I was worried about. Next pic is outcome after the scraping.

[bucksnort]

Hide looks good, keep us posted. Buck

[curlyjo]

Looks good to me. You just need practice so send that one my way and try again while it's still fresh on your mind!

[millwright]

Oh curlyjo, money can't touch that hide . It was quite an ordeal, but I'm proud to have it done. I dry ashed a calf last week that turned out like rawhide. I stretched/fleshed a nice little herford hide today and scraped a horse that I had. It turned out nice but I won't be scraping a horse again. It was way too much like work.

I have two calf hides, I'm going to lime one and dry ash the other. I have circles cut and cased from the hide in the pics and I'll finally get to cut some strings tomorrow, I hope. I also hope to have some gear made before too long to show as well. I appreciate the help/input/advice. Bret

[rcsaddles]

I did the lime method on a horse hide over Christmas and I am thinking that is the way to go on horse. I cut the hide into pieces such as both hips, both sides and then I used the 6 inch wide strip down the back as a piece. I put them in a barrel with lime water. It froze around the outside so I put a tarp over it and a little electric heater going. I had this in a shop with no insulation and no heat. I stirred it about 4 to 6 times a day. I noticesd that after about day 8 the hair was starting to slip. I did not have time during the week to do anything with it so on day 10, I got teh hide out to remove the hair. I was wondering how I was going to do it so I threw the first piece out on the ground. We had snow at the time. and used a garden hoe to scrape the hair. Let me tell you, when you think the hair is just starting to slip, wait another day or two if you can. It took all of about 15 minutes to remove the hair from all five pieces.

I then put the pieces back in teh barrel, after dumping the lime out, and used it to rinse them. I must have put clean water in and stirred it about 20 times until the water was clear. Then I put them in a bucket with about three gallons of water and a cup of white vinegar. I left it in that for about 12 hours and then used water and baking soda to neutralize everything.

I then stretched the pieces on a piece of plywood and let them dry. More after I cut some string.