If you want to make a nice sheep rug you can simply tan a sheep skin with salt. No chemicals involved! Here you can learn how to rack up the sheep hide in a frame to make it easy to work on.
Hello Xavier, thanks so much for sharing these videos. I'm stringing up my sheep skin right now, and am wondering if you keep the slip knots after completing the roping process, or switch them to a sturdier knot once you've got the right tension. Thanks!
Hello. I just keep the slip knots. They're very handy if you need to adjust the tension later on, either to relieve some pressure from the hide if it's too tight, or to tighten things up if the hide gets too floppy in humid weather.
+Ellen De graaf It needs to be warm enough that the hide dries fairly quickly. Wind will also wick moisture away quite well so you could even use a hair dryer on cold. The materials I covered on the videos are all you need to succeed.
Hi, I've been working on a couple of hides. Before salting I fleshed and scraped them to remove all the fat and tissue, and now they've been salted for about two weeks and are almost ready to go on frames. However, my hides are much, much stiffer than yours is in your videos. Do you have any thoughts on why that might be or what I could do differently?
My guess is that they dried out. It's important to keep your salted hides away from air circulation. You can read my post on how to best salt and store hides here: sustainablelivingproject.blogspot.com/2012/11/storing-deer-hides.html At this point I would probably try to rehydrate the hides by dunking them in water before you're ready to work them. If they don't turn out well you may need to rewet then resalt them and store them wet salted for a while before you can work them again. I hope this helps!
Xavier de la Foret Thank you for such a speedy reply! So if we're in a place to be able to go straight from fleshing to stretching, do we need to salt at all? What specifically does salting to do the hide? How is it similar or different to brain tanning?
Annie S Yes, the salt actually tans the hide. Without it the hide would be all hard or at the very least crinkly. The difference with brain tanning is that salt tanning is a much more passive process. Just put the salt on, wait a few weeks/months, wash it, then you're pretty much done. Brain tanning is much more labor intensive and I have found that sheep hides, being thin and having hair on, are not that well suited for it (though it can be done for sure), especially if all you want to make out of your sheep hides are rugs. Salt tanning will make the hide soft enough that it can be a very nice rug that can be rolled up easily without any crinkling. But if you wanted to make things that require more flexibility, like clothes, then brain tanning would be more appropriate.
Yes it is. It won't be as soft as a brain tan of course but it will not be crinkly and it will roll/fold up very well; definitely better than it needs to be for a rug.
