![]() Tradition has it that mountain men used their big belt knives with a block of wood stuck on the point, thus turning them into a two-handed drawknife. A dull knife can be used if held at a right angle to the hide and used to scrape instead of cut. It is used in the same motion of putting pressure on the hide and pulling toward you. These can cause you the tear the hide if you hit one while you are doing your fleshing.Ī fleshing knife looks like a drawknife but is very dull. If you are going to flesh with a beam, make sure and clean the hair side of all burrs and clumps of dirt and hair. One time in a pinch I even used a baseball bat held in a vice. A smooth 2×6 that tapers to a point works well for this. It is basically a smooth board that the hide is draped over while you scrape everything off with a fleshing knife. This needs to be removed in order for the brain solution to effectively saturate the skin.Ī fleshing beam is a useful tool to help get all of this junk off of the hide. The other option is to scrape the hair from the hide on your fleshing beam with a fleshing knife.įleshing is the process of removing all the meat, fat and membrane that is still adhered to the hide after it is skinned. Always be careful with lye and be sure to rinse the hide in several changes of water to remove any residue. ![]() You can soak the hide in a lye solution (water and wood ashes), which, after a couple days, will loosen the hair and allow it to be scraped off without too much effort. There are a couple ways to go about this. If you decide you want plain leather, you will need to remove the hair from the hide. It is probably not worth your while to try to save the inside skin you can remove it with the cartilage. The rear of the ear is thick while the inside is very thin care should be taken in removing the cartilage. If you are leaving the head on, you will want to trim off the lips and much of the cartilage on the back of the nose. When you get to the nose, cut through the cartilage and the hide should come free of the carcass. The eyes are tricky: just try to cut close to the skull and keep them as small as possible. You will want to pull it out and cut it off later. When you get to the head, cut the ear cartilage very near the skull. Skin down to these cuts and pull the legs out. You can cut out near the paw if you want legs on your fur, or cut near the body if you don’t care. When you get there, cut around the front legs like you did the back legs. You should be able to work your way down to the front shoulders/legs quickly. Start pulling the skin away from the meat using your knife to cut the membrane that holds them together. If you are keeping the tail on the hide, you will want to slit it open and remove it from the bone. To case skin an animal, start by cutting around both hind feet, then slit the backs of the legs open to the anus. Large game is also hung to flat skin, while smaller animals like beaver are laid on a flat surface. I hang an animal by its rear feet to case skin it. Most furbearers are case skinned, while beavers and big game are flat or open skinned. If you do run out of time for some unforeseen circumstance, put the hide in the freezer.Īnimals can be case skinned (like removing a sock), or open skinned by splitting down the belly and ending up with a flat pelt with fur on one side and skin on the other. For example, you don’t want to run out of time right in the middle of fleshing and have it dry out on you. Make sure you have enough time allotted to complete some of these steps in one shot. Brain tanning is not an exact science, so experience will be your best teacher. If you ask ten people who brain tan how they do things, you will probably end up with at least as many ways to arrive at the finished product. The brain coats the fibers of the hide and prevents deterioration, leaving nice usable fur (with hair left on) or leather (with hair removed). Brain tanning relies on the fact that every animal has enough brains to tan their own hide. Along with meat, each animal you take also provides you with a pelt if you wish to take advantage of it. A lot of preppers are into supplementing their food supply through hunting and trapping.
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