I have experimented with tanning animal hides a few times. I have tanned hides using a purchased ‘K tan’ solution and using eggs for a ‘brain’ tan and have been involved in and seen the process of bark or veg tanning but I wanted to have a go at doing the full process myself from scratch, as part of my bushcraft learning I like to try new things and experiment. This blog is definitely not a ‘how to’ bark tan a hide this was me experimenting to see if I could do it as primitively/simple as possible with only things I had to hand.
In the summer I bought a muntjac from a game dealer, for a work BBQ which I skinned, again this is the first time I did the whole process myself, being careful not to add any extra holes, I had done section as a team various times on courses etc. keen to use as much of the animal as possible I wanted to tan the hide and make tools from the bones.
Originally, I planned to do a hair on tan. So my first stage was to deflesh the hide with a scraper. At the time I was busy and didn’t have the tanning solution ready yet so, I covered the flesh side of the hide in salt to preserve the hide and left to dry for a few days so that it didn’t start to rot. Once the hide was dry I scraped off more of the dried membrane and sanded as much membrane away as I could.
Looking online for advice for how to tan leather there is lots of different advice on what barks to use for different effect. The list usually included lots of different barks, so I headed to my fire wood pile where I had a mix of oak, willows and cedar, which were all in various lists. I used my axe to take off all the bark from the wood, until I had enough to fill a large cooking pot.
I filled the pot with water then boiled it for a few hours to make a strong brown bark tea. I wanted to make more tanning solution, so I refilled the pot with water for a second boiling.
This was a weaker tanning solution which I would use first as a kind of pre-tan, to help the stronger solution penetrate all the way through the hide.
I left the hide in the tanning solution for a week, stirring as often as a could over the first few days.
Then I swapped the weaker solution for the stronger then left the hide in the barrel for another three weeks stirring occasionally.
After a few weeks during the stirring I noticed that the hair started to fall out. So I put the hide over a beam and scrapped off the hair .
Once the hide had been in the tanning solution for a few weeks it was time to pull and stretch the hide, to soften it and break the fibres, with the aid of a chair leg I was able to stretch the hide effectively this took most of the afternoon and it was important to do this before the hide dried out. As I pulled the fibres the hide became a lighter beige colour and the idea was to get the whole hide like this.
After the stretching it was time to ‘oil’ the hide, I didn’t have a fancy leather oil but what I did have was lard. Which I left in the sun to soften. I rubbed the lard generously into both sides of the leather. This turned the leather into a darker brown colour.
When the leather was finished, I decided that I wanted to make a pouch from it. I also wanted to do this as primitively as possible, so my idea was to use willow bark to make the thread and the leg bones from the muntjac to make the needle and bradawl to punch holes in the leather.
So, I gathered some willow bark from a tree that had been downed in a storm, and put it in a barrel of water for a week to ret. This let me pull long thin fibres from the bark which I made into a two-ply twist. Trying to get the thread as thin as possible.
To make the needle I used scrap pieces of flint and ground and shaved away the bone until left with the needle I needed.
All that was left was to punch the holes in the leather with my bone bradawl and start to sew my pouch together with a blanket stitch. As I did this, I realized that I didn’t really need the needle and I could thread the willow bark thread through the whole without. But I think making the needle using stone tools was an important part of this experiential learning journey I was on.
Finaly, I had finished my primitive homemade buscraft pouch to keep my flint knapping kit in. Is it the best leather? Certainly not. Is it the neatest bag? No. Could I have done things differently? Certainly. But it’s all part of the learning process having a go and trying. In the end I’m pleased with my pouch and its overall look and that I made it all myself from scratch. And I look forward to experimenting with other primitive crafts from scratch in the future.
