Brain Tanning Hair On Part 1

Description

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

okay so what I've got here is basically a rawhide beaver hide this is a beaver that's been skinned it's been flushed and it's been left to dry out or turn to rawhide basically what you have right now is a piece of hair on Kydex if this thing gets wet and dries out again at this point it's going to end up just like this again unfortunately you have to get to this stage if you're going to tan the hide you really need to get the thing completely dried out to begin with whether you're going to do it hair on or hair off if you're going to do a hair on hide you want to make sure that you don't get any of your brain tanning solution on the hair side you only want it on the gut side what we have to do now is we have to rehydrate this hide a little bit then we have to almost get it completely dry again from where it's just pliable enough to take the brain tanning solution but not soaking wet we want it fairly dry so we're going to soaking in this water hole here for a little while get it pliable and soft again and then we're going to start drying it out again before we can bring it meanwhile we'll get our brain tan solution ready back at camp I'll probably put a rock on this and come back now you don't want to let this thing soak like overnight or something like that in this water because it's going to slip the hair and that's what you're trying to avoid if you're going to grant an a hair on high you don't want the hair to slip so it's very important that you get that thing flushed get everything off of that hide all the meat and everything you can get off of it and let that thing dry and then start the brain tan process all over from getting the hide wet again but not letting it soak any longer than it takes just to get the hide flexible otherwise again the hairs going to slip okay so what we want to do is we want to brain tan this high and really technically speaking brain tan is not leather brain tan is a different process to make leather you have to bark tan it with tannins from trees and things like that and bark tanning is a very long arduous process of making a tanning liquor or a bark liquor basically in several different batches of different strengths and then soaking the high in that liquor for varying amounts of time depending on the size of the hide and things like that but it can take months to bark Tana hide properly and then it becomes what's known in Europe as true leather bark tanning was brought over here to the u.s. from Europe it's a very old technique for tanning hi it's probably one of the oldest brain tanning a hide is much quicker but it's also very labor-intensive process so the first thing we had to do is we had to skin the animal obviously and once we skinned the beaver and stretched him on a board or a stretching rack or a circle like this one a hoop we will let it dry out and this one's getting very very close to being dry now the one we used yesterday that we dunked in the water it was fairly well dried out back it was really dry it took me a little while of soaking it actually to get it to where I want it now what we have is we have something that's still pliable but it's not wet it's just kind of damp and that's what we want for the brain tanning process now brain tanning takes like I said several steps and the first one is to get the high cleaned off get the gut side cleaned off and all the membrane off the hide and they get it stretched and dried out then we're going to rehydrate it a little bit so that we can open the pores back up in the hide so that we can soak a brain solution into that hide which is what we're doing now why we started the fire to heat up the water every animal is supposed to have a large enough brain and enough chemicals and tannins in the brain to what's called tan the hide even though it's not really a leather process you're still tanning the hide because you're using tannins within the brain to tan the hide and you're going to make a brain tanning solution from that brain so you're going to heat water up you don't want hot you just want it warm then you're going to mix the brain into that warm

would not hot enough you can't put your hands in it because you really got to get in there and mix that up really really really good it's got to be a slurry of brain matter in that water and the less water you use the better off you are so about one cup of water to you know a beaver size brain is going to be plenty then you've got to spread that and massage that into the hide which is what we're going to do next now we've gotten rid of the brains from these beavers that we have so what I'm going to use is I'm going to use pork brains and I get these out of Virginia for my buddy Tony Daniel you can buy pork brains at most butcher shops and things like that especially if you live in the south so we're going to take some of this pork brain out of here we're going to mix it in that warm water to make our brain tan solution I'm going to show you that right now now when we're done with this process and again we're doing a hair on brain tanning so we've got to be careful with that we'll talk about that in a minute but I have a piece of brain tan here that's deer hide and this is a hair off brain Tan but this is basically the consistency that you're looking for a nice soft tan material like a buckskin in this case is going to be beaver hide but this is what we're looking for and consistency it's nice and stretchy its soft and supple and that's exactly what we're looking for for a garment grade piece of brain Tan and we're going to use to make something out of like a hat I have a blanket laid out here on the ground just a wolf shroud it's got several holes in it it's the same blanket that I cut the Hat material from the other day I'm going to use this to wrap the Hylian when we're done because we can't let this hide freeze either now what we're going to do is we're going to take some of this pork brain here and I've only got I've actually probably got more water in this container than I need so I'm going to dump a little bit of it out over here on the ground and just leave myself about a cup and a half and I'm going to take a little bit more of this pork corn that I think I need I'm going to use about half of this container that's probably about the size of a beaver brain

then we need to mix this into a slurry and we can do this with our hands or we can do it with a stick or we can do it with a beater on the end of a drill or we can do it with a hand operated drill but we need to really squeeze this brain matter down into the solution and create a slurry and break up as much of it as we can in this liquid put it in your hands and rub it together it's a little gooey a little gross but it's part of the process if you want to learn to brain tan is you really want to extract all of that material into this brain tanning solution so when you're done it's going to look a little bit milky and it should it should look a little bit like a watered-down milk when you're done you get everything smashed up really really good I can't tell you how important this part of the process is so take your time you don't have to be in a hurry

these primitive type skills are not something that you hurry take your time get any chunks you can get off the bottom grind them up in your hand really good

once you can stop picking up chunks out of the bottom you've probably got it done pretty good now remember I said we wanted to keep this hide fairly dry and that's part of the reason for not wanting to use too much of this getting too much water in this solution because we're going to pour this on the hog we're gonna be using this on the hide all right so now the next thing we have to remember is we don't want to get this brain tan solution on the fur so let's get the hide out we'll start working this in okay so now I'm going to unroll my hide here and I'm going to start adding brain solution to this hide and I'm going to rub it into every crack and crevice with my hands and really work it in there you got to get the edges you got to get the ears you got to get the nose you're really going to get every inch of this thing if you want this to work

if it's cold outside start yourself a fire saying get your hands warmed up but this liquid should be fairly warm and I'm just working about half the height at a time here with my hands now if you are doing a hair off high you can actually soak the hide in the solution itself and work it in there and wring it in really good and do it that way and that works really good for something that you're doing hair off like a piece of buckskin or something like that but if you're trying to do a hair on tan you have to be much more careful with it because the tanning solution that gets on the backside is going to make the hair slip

again this is something you don't want to rush you want to take your time and get this really worked into the hide and I'm doing this on a wool blanket more than anything else just to keep the fur off the ground and keep it from getting too dirty we're taking a chance on it freezing to the ground while I'm doing this while I'm in process here I don't want that to happen either to pull the hair out if you've got this hide what enough it should start to absorb this liquid a little bit and that's what you want because you need it to soak in really really well into the pores of this hide now I leave a little bit of residual liquid on here when I'm done just kind of slaughter it on there a little bit slash it around because we're going to have to let this sit for 24 to 48 hours anyway and we're going to fold it over on itself it's not going to hurt anything for this stuff to sit on the hide the fact it will be beneficial as it'll help it soak in better okay once I've got this rubbed in really well on every nook and cranny of this hide the next step is to fold this hide up remember that we can't let the fur touch this brain solution so we really kind of have to just fold it over on itself like this as best we can like this kind of like an envelope and we don't want this hide to freeze so I'm going to wrap it in this wool blanket so while Rufus drinks the rest of the pork brain liquid here I'm going to fold this hide inside this wool blanket because I don't want to freeze and it's cold outside so now I've got to take care for that not to happen you see I've got the outside where I had it on there to begin with because it's got brain tan solution on this one to be very very careful so I'm just going to wrap this whole thing up just like this and hopefully it won't freeze the next two days