Q&A for How to Tan a Hide

In a well-ventilated room, pour a box of baking soda into the tanning solution to neutralize the acid. Step away from the solution to avoid inhaling any fumes, and wait until the mixture stops bubbling. You can take this mixture to your local household hazardous waste facility or throw it over weeds to kill them, but never pour it down the drain.

Yes, but it might leave you with a stiff texture. If you want soft fur, use brain oils or an alum-salt solution to tan your hide instead.

Yes. You can use a pig brain, which you can find at your local butcher or meat market.

Natives still had Access to salt, smoke and water, and also used the animal's urine to help cure the hide. There is a curing process that was accomplished with these techniques, but with more primitive methods, like using stone or glass to cut away the flesh instead of modern steel or aluminum.

Skip the hair removal step, then rub the brain solution onto the bare side, working it in thoroughly. Fold the hide in such a way that the brain solution doesn't get onto the fur side. Then follow the rest of the steps.

Taking the hair off is mostly for aesthetic purposes. Many people find hairless leather easier to take care of than fur. If you really want to, you can leave the hair on. Be sure to only apply the solutions to the leather side, and not the hair side.

Try using Borax laundry detergent. Flesh the hide, cover it in Borax and let it sit for 3-4 days.

Perhaps try salting the hides well, drying them and storing them in a dry place. The hides must be soaked in water to release the salt before tanning.

Yes. It may take a little more work to get it to soften, but you can keep pelts for six months or more in the freezer. If you kept the face on a pelt, the freezer would do damage to the nose, lips and eyelid areas, and they wouldn't look as good.

Rock salt is more water absorbent. Sea salt tends to corrode the leather.

Put it in a Ziploc or rubber storage container in the fridge. If it's going to take you a while you can put it in the freezer and take it out to thaw in the fridge the day before you're ready to use it.

After you tanned it, while it's still moist, pull and stretch and work it over an edge until it's completely dry.

Use a blunt knife or other blade. You can also use a sharp knife, but be gentle.

Follow the instructions listed in the article above.

If it's brittle instead of rigid, it's probably not a fresh hide, or it was overthinned while fleshing and will probably fall apart when tanning. Otherwise, if it's already processed -- as in leather -- apply common skin moisturizer once a year.

No. Salting the hide draws out all the moisture, kills bacteria and helps to set the hair if leaving hair on. Salting your hide is one of the most important steps to tanning a deer hide and should never be omitted.

No, it's not really possible to tan the skin of a catfish.

No, it doesn't.

Soak it and wash the salt out of the tissue, rinsing it completely. Then brain it with the cooked brains, wash it and wring it out before stretching and working it. I have found wringing to be a very important part of tanning hides. It speeds up the drying process when you work it with an ax handle or over a post.