#LONG DARK CURED LEATHER SKIN#
#LONG DARK CURED LEATHER TRIAL#

You will see the concentrate become paler each day as the tannins are absorbed and locked into the hide so you should darken the solution as necessary to make more tannins available. For the following 14 days or so all you are required to do is add a cups worth of the concentrate tannins (you may need to boil up more batches of concentrate) each day and swirl the hide round in solution. Submerge your hide in the diluted tannins in a Tupperware container or similar and agitate the solution regularly for the first day. You will keep the left-over concentrate to top up the tannins on a daily basis until the hide is finished.

#LONG DARK CURED LEATHER SKIN#

Next you are going to dilute the concentrate down to half strength, so measure the volume, pour half into a plastic container where you will tan the skin and make the volume back up with fresh water. Allow it to cool and DO NOT pour it onto your hide whilst hot as this will ruin the skin. This is your concentrated stock solution. Ideally this boiling should be done outdoors, but indoors works fine provided you can vent the steam as it boils.ДЄim to simmer the bark for an hour to extract the dark liquid youвЂ™ll use to tan the hide. YouвЂ™ll need a large pan to put the bark into (aim for half a carrier bags worth) and fill the pan with water.

Talk to tree surgeons if you are struggling for materials and see if they have any branches from jobs that you can salvage pre wood shredder. You will need access to some tree bark вЂ“ any type will do but Oak and Sweet Chestnut are favourites for me seemingly providing endless amounts of dark tannins when boiled up. You should know that tanning furs in this way will stain the fur a dark colour so if you are looking to preserve the beautiful snow-white pelage of a mountain or snow shoe hare for example then you should seek an alternative method! So you might choose a rabbit hide for example вЂ“ these are notoriously thin skins and some care should be taken in the skinning and scraping clean the inside surface to remove any meat or fat. If you want to attempt tanning a hide with tree bark IвЂ™d suggest opting for something very thin that will absorb the tannins fairly rapidly and thoroughly вЂ“ a big pit fall in this type of tannin is ensuring that the tannins вЂtravelвЂ™ right the way through the hide and donвЂ™t simply bond to the outer surfaces which could then lead to the centre of the hide rotting over time.

#LONG DARK CURED LEATHER TRIAL#

The timber from our Oak woodlands may have been destined for the Navy and construction but the bark that was peeled from the logs was sent to the tanneries where it could be processed to extract the precious tannins used in converting green hides into tough durable leathers.ДЄ simple home trial of tanning animal hides using tree bark couldnвЂ™t be more straight forwards with very little time on your part and almost no expense in equipment and materials required. In a world pre plastics and synthetic materials the skins of large domestic animals such as horses and cows were highly valued and our tanning industry here in the UK was booming on an industrial scale.

Saddles, straps and horse-riding rigging.Some examples of how leather was and still is put to practical use: The ability to preserve animal skins and furs using tannins is a highly useful skill in bushcraft and is highlighted historically by just how many industries relied on leather products in by gone times. Think of the hard, thick and very inflexible nature of boiled leather armour as compared to the supple soft and water-resistant leather required for water resistant footwear as an example of how different veg tanned products can be. The fact that you can produce a range of colours and a variety of thicknesses and flexibilities gives you a huge selection of material properties to aim for with a certain finished product in mind. Whether the grain is left on a hide or removed.How/ if you then go about softening the resulting leather.The length of time the hides are left to soak.There are a great many factors affecting the resulting products of veg tan for example:

The type of bark you use for the tannins and whether you boil or simply cold soak the bark will produce different types of tannin that will have different effects on the skins you are trying to tan. Tanning animal skins and furs is a very satisfying craft to develop and there are many processes/ methods you can use to preserve these natural materials.ДЄ fairly straight forwards approach is to soak your animal skin or fur in vegetable tannins вЂ“ you can boil almost any tree bark to create a dark brown вЂteaвЂ™ with which to submerge the hide in.

Long dark cured leather