Rawhide to Braintan?

[hungryjohn]

I'm a bit curious to see if decent braintan can be made out of rawhide. I can get the rawhide for very little and figure that if it can still be tanned, I could start with half the work being done for me already.

Has anyone got any experience with this? If so, please tell how you did it.

[Red Badger]

I guess it depends on how the "rawhide" was created... I have some deer I soaked in wood ash and scraped then tacked up to dry... about 6 months later soaked it in water and got it soft again then brained, and smoked it and seems to be good -  Now I need to finish up about three more for my buckskins and pray that Bulldog Lady will help me with the sewin...   

[hungryjohn]

Since I have some rawhide my brother-in-law gave me about a year ago, I decided to cut off a corner and see what I can do with it. Getting it soft was no problem. I just stuck it in some water for a couple hours. I decided to try Lexol as a tanning agent as that's all I had available. But what I've discovered so far, is that it takes quite a bit of soaking to get any penetration. In fact, I've got it soaking in solution right now. Later I'll try working it a bit to see what I get.

Don't know yet if it's my solution or the hide itself that's giving me the problem. I just might find that I wasted some leather conditioner and time to create goo  . But I'm still hopeful.

[Red Badger]

the key is to wring it out as much as possible then put it in the brain solution and work it in real good and then let it soak - should be the same with the lexol once you wring out the water allows it to soak into the hide...

[hungryjohn]

I'm not totally happy with the results I got. But I'm not completely disgusted either. The piece I used for my experiment turned out to be too small to really get a good grip on. This resulted in my not being able to work and beat-up the fibers really well. In the end, I found myself with a piece somewhere around 2 inches by 3.5 inches. A bit stiff but usuable if it were a larger peice.

In all, it allowed me to learn that it can be done, and where I can improve. Now once this blizzard stops I'll think of something new to give myself a headache over.