Skinning

Send your fleshed and salted capes and hides to a Tannery. This is our best advice when you are starting out. Give yourself time to get the taxidermy part of this business down pat. Give yourself time to learn the rhythms of the seasons and the cash-flow aspect and work through your mounting technique, developing your own style that will allow you to produce work in a practical time-frame and still give your customer a work of art. You can make more customers happy and make more money spending your time on taxidermy work instead of tanning. Tanning by commercial tanneries is not very expensive (deer capes generally run $23-$40), and for the amount of time you'll have wrapped up in struggling through the tanning process, you could have been putting together someone's mount, and you could have ended your day with a lot more progress toward a finished piece that a customer will come in and pay you for.

Commercial tanneries do this for a living. They have a lot more of the kinks worked out than we will ever hope to. We do run into problems with tanneries, delayed capes, lost or damaged capes, etc, but when your tannery delivers you an on-schedule shipment of capes or hides, their product is so consistent that that variable (wondering about the condition of the cape) is eliminated from our life, and things mount smoothly and ...consistently... Any time you can get an assembly line going, and tanneries help with this because the batches they send back are going to have similar rehydrating characteristics and similar stretch and thinness, and you can count on all your capes mounting in a similar manner and reacting in a similar manner, you can gain speed and quality.

That having been said, (and we did have to say it), there is a time and a place for in-shop tanning. We use an auto-tanner for deer capes. We like the auto-tanner, because it is the easiest, surest way to get a consistent tan in inconsistent weather and in a busy shop where we don't have the room or the leisure for open vats to soak tans until they're done.

To KrowTann: If you’re going to try tanning, we encourage you to try this. It will be a few batches before you’re comfortable anticipating the process, and before you know if things are turning out the way they’re supposed to at each stage. Keep with it, and follow the directions and become comfortable with KrowTann. It’s worth it.

Before this was invented, we did not feel comfortable encouraging you to count on any product for reliable, consistent results. And we didn’t have anything that worked well enough in our shop to make it worthwhile for us to spend time and aggravation to tan our own deer capes. It would have taken an extraordinary product to make it easy for us to say, “If you’re dead set on tanning your own deer capes, do it this way” until KrowTann was invented. Not only does it give a reliable tan and a lovely stretchy hide that is beautiful to work with and beautiful to present to a customer, it seems to have a very high tolerance for hides that we wouldn’t have usually tried to tan because they were too stinky. Stinky usually means rotten, but we’ve dunked a few stinky capes in the KrowTann, followed the directions carefully, and been able to salvage previously unsalvageable capes. Remarkable.

KrowTann produces a “wet tan”. It is not suitable for any hide or cape that you want to drape over the back of anything, but the characteristics that make it un-drape-able, make it absolutely perfect for gorgeous deer heads. (If you’re wanting to tan a furred mammal for a rug, a commercial tannery will give you a softer product.) For KrowTann, after tanning and shaving, the cape can be bagged tightly and tagged and frozen for up to 1 year. To use, thaw, measure, order form, and mount.

KrowTann’s instructions are included on the following page. They are also on every bottle and included in every order.

The product is manufactured by Ozark Woods 2536 Prairieview Road South, Harrison, AR 72601, 1-800-467-0369. KrowTann is also carried by Van Dykes and McKenzie.

A KrowTanned cape, when tanned all the way through, will be white. As you shave, or thin the hide, on the shaving wheel, you can tell the hide is ready because the color is all the way through. When properly KrowTanned, it is possible to use the actual measurements of your hide (without dropping an inch for fit).

KrowTann will give you a wet tan that is very suitable for deer capes. Because of the nature of the tan, the cape will dry "hard". KrowTann will not produce, on it's own, the leather-backed fur that you can drape over the back of the couch for a throw. The KrowTann will produce, in timely fashion, a cape very suitable for immediate mounting or freezing, and that is what most of our shop work is. For rugs or for throws, a commercial tannery will always be your best best for a supple hair-on leather with nice drape. You can make a reasonable facsimile of this in your own shop, but it will be at the expense of a great deal of time and effort, which, we've already established, might be better spent getting something mounted, and getting paid. If a customer wants a rug or a throw, flesh the piece, salt it, send it, call the customer when it gets back, and get paid. We don't encourage you to spend weeks on that one piece coming up with an ingenious method for doing what the tannery already does so well. (Unless you are bored out of your mind, and have way too much money, and you don't ever have to think about what you're going to pay the electric bill with.)

Rough flesh the skin, turning the lips, nose, ears, and eyes. Wash bloody and dirty skins before putting them in the tan. Degrease oily skins by your normal methods before going on to step 2. Wash in clear water before putting the skin in the tan.

1. Mix up the prescribed amount of tan, salt and water in a plastic container and submerge the skin, skin side out, and weigh it down with a water filled milk jug. Keep a lid on your container.

2. Leave the skin in the tan for 1-4 days, depending on the thickness of the skin. We recommend 3-4 days in most cases. (refer to commonly asked questions 1,2 and 9) Each day lift the skin out of the tan and stretch it out, and return it to the tan in a new position to insure that the tan is reaching all parts of the skin. Do not stir the skin while in the tan.

3. Pull the skin out of the tan and wash the skin in clear water for a few minutes.

4. In a separate bucket add the appropriate amount of water and sodium bicarbonate per chart above. Submerge the skin with a water filled milk jug and leave the skin in this mixture for 15 minutes. Agitate the skin occasionally. Extra large skins will require more of the mixture.

6. Do your final fleshing at this time. Afterwards, if the skin is not soft and stretchy at this point, then re-neutralize the hide in a fresh batch of sodium bicarbonate and water (step 5) for 5 minutes.

8. Troubleshooting
The skin is not soft or stretchy: you have either not neutralized the skin long enough or have not fleshed the skin thin enough. Complete step 7.

9. The hair is slipping: you probably had a bad skin to start with, you have over neutralized the skin or have not used the correct amount of salt. Mount the skin ASAP trying not to tug or pull on the slipping area. You can apply de-natured alcohol to the affected area. When the skin is dry it should set the hair. Using Krowtann, slipping should not be a problem.

10. There is not enough stretch: apply Krow-Oil to the skin only in the neck area. Let it set for 1-2 hours before mounting or freezing.

If the directions are followed correctly, your skin should feel like a wet dish towel and have as much stretch as a green skin.
However, due to this product being used in conditions beyond our control, we make no warranty of any kind, expressed or implied. We suggest that you try Krowtann on a scrap skin first.
An instructional DVD is available for purchase through Ozark Woods (800) 467-0369

Instructions pulled from website: http://www.krowtann.com/krowtann_instructions.htm

To Tan Any Other Way: Consult a good book. We recommend Breakthrough Mammal Taxidermy Manual, written by Ken Edwards. Breakthrough Magazine also ran an extensive article section on Tanning in Issues # 49-56. These two recommendations cover techniques, chemicals, equipment, etc. You will learn enough to be completely intimidated. And after all that reading, you're going to just have to haul off and try some of the ideas, working with the solutions and chemicals until you find a combination that works consistently.

To shave the capes, sit behind the shaving wheel, with the back of it to your chest, and your arms reaching around it. Grasp the cape in two hands and pull it from left to right against the spinning blade. Never operate your blade without the guards in place. Stop every so often to sharpen your blade (which means to adjust the angle that the blade is rolled over). You shouldn't have to lean into the shaving part. If everything's adjusted right, touching the the cape to the blade will cut it, and moving it from left to right will zing it off in a strip. We prefer to not shave the faces with the wheel, but we do thin the faces with a skinning knife at the desk. You're shooting for 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch left on the cape, and whatever depth it is, it should be uniform all over the cape. (If it is thick up on the neck seam, it will be hard to sew later. If it is too thin, the thread will cut it when you pull it through. Just a few more things to worry about while you're learning how to do this.)

When finished, place the capes in heavy bags, labeled with customer number and name, and freeze them, or mount immediately.

Using Krow Oil for Soft Tanning/ Rugs

Tan your hide per the instructions with Krowtann 2000
Apply Krow-Oil to the flesh side of the skin and fold the skin up flesh to flesh. Leave it folded up at room temperature for 24 hours.

Method No.1

After step 2, mount the head as usual, then open up the rest of the skin and each day stretch and pull on your skin for a few minutes. Do this until the skin is completely dry. As it dries, it should start turning white as you pull on it. It is very important that you work the skin each day to obtain a soft piece of leather. After the skin is completely dry, re-oil the skin with Krow-Oil. As it is drying, continue to stretch it some and this should produce a soft leather. If any hard spots develop, lightly spray them with a 50/50 mixture of fabric softener and water and continue to work these spots. the more you work your skin the softer it will become. This method should produce a soft leather for you. To make your leather even softer, after doing the above, re-hydrate the skin in clear water for 45 minutes and then let it "sweat" in a cool place overnight. Then stretch out the skin into the shape you want and let it dry. After it's dry you can work the skin some more if you desire.

Method No.2

This method is the easiest, however it does not produce as soft a leather as method 1, but for most taxidermist this method will work fine for wall hangings and rug work. After step 2, mount your head if it is for a rug. While the skin is still wet, nail the skin using 3" finish nails to a sheet of plywood, stretching it in the shape you want. Pull the skin up on the nails where air can circulate between the skin and the plywood. When the skin is completely dry, apply another coat of Krow-Oil and let this dry. The skin should be relatively soft at this point.

These methods should work well for animals up to and including the size of deer. For elk and larger animals we would recommend sending the skin off to a professional tannery. Your degree of success will depend on your skill level.