Seeing as its deer season I was thinking this might be helpful to some. I am no professional, and still doing my first one. Already I made a couple mistakes, and thought I'd share them here.
1: Fleshing- Be prepared for elbow grease. Some say a somewhat dull object is better than a sharper one. I found it easiest to use a knife for this part, after trying multiple scraping items like spoons, sheet metal I shaped, paint scrapers, etc. A drawknife or knife that can be drawn easily would work as that's what I ended up doing with my knife. However with a sharp knife you stand a much better chance of cutting the hide so be careful. Remove meat until you see indentations of blood vessels, then you've removed the membrane.
I left a couple small pieces of meat on the edges to see what would happen later.
2: Salting: A variety of things can be used here, I used salt and borax. The purpose of this is to help wick moisture out of the hide and helps to keep bugs off as well as bacteria. Liberally cover them, I skimped at first not thinking about it. Within a few hours I noticed something odd, a slightly off smell. So I took it down and salted again, this time covering it about 1\4 inch thick with salt and borax. This seemed to work as the smell left and has yet to return.
Remember those pieces of meat I mentioned, don't leave any on during the fleshing process, this stuff turns black and rock solid. I just cut those pieces off so I lost a few inches of hide in doing so. After salting be prepared for lots of dripping as the blood and water seeps from the hide.
3: Washing/drying: All that dripping caused the fur on the lowest parts to get all nasty, so I mixed up a bit of diluted dish liquid in water and washed the nasty off the lower sections of fur and dried with a hair dryer. That worked but now I had to get the layer of salt and borax off before drying it. After many scraping items I found a metal paint scraper worked best. After removing that I had to finish drying the hide.
Here is where things were really wanting to go south. I was so worried about bugs that I didnt want it outside, silly I know. But I read horror stories about bugs outdoors and thought I would try the garage. Big mistake. Apparently I didn't dry some of it good enough with the hair dryer because after about 36hrs. I noticed a section that didn't want to dry at all. I also noticed how slow the rest was drying and got worried about mold and put it out in the sun first chance I got.
After watching for bugs, still nothing and now the hide is almost dry completely after about a full day in the sun. However I lost a little more on the lower left and an inch or two on the neck where I didn't have it tacked completely flat. Thankfully this didn't really affect the hides overall shape too much, just a little uneven.
That's it for now, I hope to start the braining process next week. So hopefully I don't mess up too bad there, if I do I'll probably share those as well if anyone's interested.
1: Fleshing- Be prepared for elbow grease. Some say a somewhat dull object is better than a sharper one. I found it easiest to use a knife for this part, after trying multiple scraping items like spoons, sheet metal I shaped, paint scrapers, etc. A drawknife or knife that can be drawn easily would work as that's what I ended up doing with my knife. However with a sharp knife you stand a much better chance of cutting the hide so be careful. Remove meat until you see indentations of blood vessels, then you've removed the membrane.
I left a couple small pieces of meat on the edges to see what would happen later.
2: Salting: A variety of things can be used here, I used salt and borax. The purpose of this is to help wick moisture out of the hide and helps to keep bugs off as well as bacteria. Liberally cover them, I skimped at first not thinking about it. Within a few hours I noticed something odd, a slightly off smell. So I took it down and salted again, this time covering it about 1\4 inch thick with salt and borax. This seemed to work as the smell left and has yet to return.
Remember those pieces of meat I mentioned, don't leave any on during the fleshing process, this stuff turns black and rock solid. I just cut those pieces off so I lost a few inches of hide in doing so. After salting be prepared for lots of dripping as the blood and water seeps from the hide.
3: Washing/drying: All that dripping caused the fur on the lowest parts to get all nasty, so I mixed up a bit of diluted dish liquid in water and washed the nasty off the lower sections of fur and dried with a hair dryer. That worked but now I had to get the layer of salt and borax off before drying it. After many scraping items I found a metal paint scraper worked best. After removing that I had to finish drying the hide.
Here is where things were really wanting to go south. I was so worried about bugs that I didnt want it outside, silly I know. But I read horror stories about bugs outdoors and thought I would try the garage. Big mistake. Apparently I didn't dry some of it good enough with the hair dryer because after about 36hrs. I noticed a section that didn't want to dry at all. I also noticed how slow the rest was drying and got worried about mold and put it out in the sun first chance I got.
After watching for bugs, still nothing and now the hide is almost dry completely after about a full day in the sun. However I lost a little more on the lower left and an inch or two on the neck where I didn't have it tacked completely flat. Thankfully this didn't really affect the hides overall shape too much, just a little uneven.
That's it for now, I hope to start the braining process next week. So hopefully I don't mess up too bad there, if I do I'll probably share those as well if anyone's interested.
