When my children and I went down the road to help the neighbors slaughter animals before Christmas… well… that’s a story in itself. You can hear me tell it here:
Anyhow, we noticed that the neighbors were removing the skin from the bull they were butchering and one of my sons said, “Dad – do you think they’d give us a piece so I can turn it into leather?”
I asked and they graciously shared a small piece with him. We asked if anyone there knew how to tan leather but they didn’t, though the farmer in charge told my son that if he made his little piece into leather, they’d give him the whole cow-hide next time.
Once we got home, I put the skin in the fridge as it was late. The next day we pulled it out and started scraping off the fat and flesh:
You can see all the knife marks from where the farmers sawed the skin off the cow, but overall we got a good, thick piece of skin.
After scraping we covered it in salt and let it dry for a couple of weeks. It took that long because it’s been raining almost every day and the skin just didn’t want to finish.
I know nothing about leather tanning and I can’t get most of the ingredients many sites say we need, but my son is now attempting to “egg tan” it.
No idea if all this mess will work, but we shall see. It’s an experiment.
If you’re really interested in tanning and leathermaking, Skillcult has some good in-depth info.
3 responses to “A Cow Hide Experiment”
When I first read the title of this I thought you had found a new and exciting way to add protein to your larder at very low cost.
There are some tools which make the job easier. Perhaps one can buy them on the internet now; when I knew a trapper, he had improvised his, or bought them from other trappers. He would nail his skins to big wooden wheels–scavenged from those big drums of cable. They were heavy but they stayed straight and lasted forever.
I have a friend who raises meat goats. I have another friend who makes drums, with goat hide drum heads. I looked into tanning the goat skins. It’s very challenging, easy to screw up, and seriously labor intensive.
The drum maker gets his hides from Pakistan, which is challenging, easy to screw up, and takes much time and generates frustration. But it’s still far less expensive than tanning them here. Still, the knowledge is worth having. People I know have done brain tanning, and smoke tanning, both Ojibwe skills.
Yes – it really is time-consuming, as we’ve been finding out. Fun to try, but unlike coffee processing I’m probably not going to do it all that much. Great for my son to work on, though.
Making a drum head would be awesome. There are trees here in the Cecropia family that have hollow trunks which can be used as drums when cut and carved a bit. I’d like to try that one day.
Dave,
Brain tanning works well. Same way the Indians did it. Doesn’t have to be cow brains, any will do. Just look up brain tanning online.
Plus it has that added “Yuck Factor” that the kids will Love :)