How to Tan a Deerskin

Tanning a deerskin into either rawhide or buckskin is surprisingly easy. More than anything, tanning just requires patience. The things you'll need are common household items or else easily gathered items. With these required items and enough know-how, you can adorn your walls or floors with a beautifully tanned buckskin. Or you could produce quality material for moccasins, boots, chaps or a variety of other projects.

Things You'll Need

• Deerskin
• Salt solution (1 pound of salt for every two gallons of water)
• Wood ash solution (1 gallon of wood ash plus tubful of water)
• Soap solution (3 lbs. white soap chips plus ten gallons of warm water)
• Deer tallow (melted down deer fat from deerskin)
• Blunt-edged knife or other blunt-edged tool
• "Workbench" (table or large smooth log or other workable area)
• Various containers (large buckets, tub, etc.)

Instructions

How to Tan a Deerskin

1. Immerse the entire hide in the salt solution to soften it for tanning. This takes anywhere from 6 hours to 3 days depending on the stiffness of the hide.

2. Remove all remaining meat and fat from the fleshy side of the hide. Peel off the larger pieces by hand. Then lay the hide over the edge of sturdy table, log, or other similar "workbench" and use a blunt knife or other similarly blunt-edged tool to scrape away the smaller pieces.

3. Remove all the hair from the deerskin by immersing it in the wood ash solution for several days. The wood ash solution is made by adding a gallon of wood ashes to a tubful of hot water, stirring the solution, and then allowing the solution to cool to room temperature before immersing the deerskin. Pull on the hair now and then to discover when the hair can easily be removed. When ready, lay the wet hide over your workbench and either scrape away or pull off the hair. Also scrape away the filmy layer on the hide beneath the hair.

4. To finish tanning a deerskin into rawhide, dry the wet hide by stretching it across a board, tacking down its edges, and letting it dry in a cool, shady, well-ventilated place. Or stretch the hide across a frame made of four poles, sewing the edges of the hide to the four poles. Let the hide dry.

5. To turn rawhide into buckskin, four more steps are necessary. After cleaning the hide, oil the fleshy (not the previously hairy) side of the hide with deer tallow. Hang it in the shade to dry for one day.

6. Once dry, prepare the hide for softening by immersing it in the soap solution for 3 days to a week. The soap solution can be made by mixing the 3 pounds of soap chips with the 10 gallons of warm water. The hide is done soaking and ready for softening when the soap solution can be squeezed easily through the hide.

7. To soften, rub the entire hide evenly over the edge of a table or over the outside of a smooth log. This step requires considerable time and effort.

8. To finish the buckskin, stretch out the hide and smoke it evenly over a hardwood fire. This final step darkens, softens, and waterproofs the buckskin.

Tips & Warnings

• If you wish to tan a hide with the hair on it, complete the necessary steps for making either rawhide or buckskin but omit step 3 -- removing hair from the hide. After the final step of smoking the buckskin, you may further soften the hide by oiling it, but this step is usually not needed and more a matter of personal taste.

• Best to work on an unfinished hide in the cool and shade as intense sunlight can damage the hide by "burning" it.