I gained some serious respect for leather when I saw a video on the process done at an industrial level and must say this process is even more eye opening. Thanks.
Brilliant. I learned making leather from your videos a couple of years ago already, but it's still interesting to watch those videos. Brings back a lot of memories :) I can definately relate to the procrastination. Back then i bought a deer rawhide from the internet that i wanted to turn into leather and i still haven't gotten around to tanning it.
Luke Baker here, in Kansas. I haven’t commented I’m on any of your stuff yet, but you should know that I’m a HUGE fan of all your work. I have in my lap my second attempt (both successful) at bark tanning, entirely thanks to your videos. Just a small patch of snapping turtle leather, but of huge enjoyment to me (the other is a snake skin). Keep the videos coming. Maybe show us some of your leather work and how you make/sew leather crafts. More “primitive” skills videos too please. Thanks again
Thanks Luke, it's always good to know people are actually applying this stuff. I'm not much of a leather worker, but I might be able to help with methods of simple leather working that don't require tons of fancy tools. Leatherworkers seem to have the most amount of crazy specialized tools, and they aren't cheap!
@@SkillCult I agree, some leatherwork videos on making simple items with basic tools would be very cool. I think "not much of a leatherwork" is somewhat of an understatement, I am really impressed by the English leather mug you made a video about. Very SkillCult'ish project by not requiring a ton of tools and materials and the process being pretty intuitive yet resulting in a pretty refined and useful finished item
Thanks for the videos Steven, I was looking forward to see it for a while - especially the flattening with the sleekers part, and that cork thing at work... couldn't get to it so far, summer nights being so short. It's immensely helpful... I've got a 220 liter barrel full of tanned dried hides awaiting finish. Mostly goat, some horse and donkey. I have tried flattening hides on plywood before, and now I can see what I did wrong (rough plywood, hot and dry weather, metal sleeker too blunt). Aint nothing even close to this level of good information anywhere. It would have gotten ten thousand times more views in the world I would have liked to live in!
Thanks Nimrod. for thick hides, like maybe even donkey, you might get away with plywood. it's actually nice to have some texture to grip onto the skin. But anything thin at all on rough surfaces, and you already know what happens I guess. if you don't have one, make a stone, tile, or glass sleeker. Even hardwood is okay. You really kind of need that rounded smooth "edge" with the ends gently turned up to get the grain dead smooth. And yeah, slow drying is critical. If you think about it, it makes sense. if the water leaves the outside layer of skin too fast, it is going to stay fat inside, while the exterior is trying to shrink, resulting in some kind of unflat drying. The heat is a real problem, and I'm sure it's brutal there. You probably have goat and sheep fat, so use at least 50% of that, and if you have a cellar or anyplace cool, or can do it in cooler weather, it's much better.
@@SkillCult Yeah, I've got lots of goat tallow at hand, hardly anyone in my family will eat anything fried in it, no matter my insistence that they could get used to it...lacking sufficient cellar space, I'll wait for cooler weather for this kind of finishing. I would imagine november will do here. Thanks!
These tanoaks provide the best color. Have been to California once and tried to bring a seedling back to europe. But it didn't made it even to the airport.
Thanks to you I've now learned how to go from pelt to leather, just lack the experience, also if it's not a bother could you show us what you use all the leather for?
I may do some on using the leather. Still thinking about what to do with them. Probably at least the cattle hide. I'm more of a tanner than a leather worker though.
Hope you're doing well out there in CA. turns out MA is in the opposite of a drought. My predictive skills are garbage hehe. But your Polish Linguisa seeds have turned into beautiful plants, set fruit 2 weeks ago and they're ripening now. Blight is coming on fast though.
Polish Liguisa gets hammered by blight here. I have high hopes for Zapotec resisting it, but we'll see. it would be awesome to have a resistant variety similar to Polish Linguisa and Blue Beech. Water is getting low here. just hoping we squeak by and get rain this year.
@@SkillCult with the amount of rain we got, the lilacs are even getting something fungal. Hard to believe anything could withstand this much wet. Huge year for mushrooms though. Hope you avoid wildfires too!
Excellent, thank you very much for the effort. This Oak tanned piece looks like acacia nilotica seeds tanned in color. We use the seeds for traditional tanning in the Sahara region due to the lack of trees. By the way, I would really love to see the result of bark tanning an alum tanned piece as I have a lamb fur coated in the alum paste at the moment. I believe alum tanning is a fake unstable tanning that I would love to veg tan again once I have enough acacia seeds. So keep the awesome work 🙂
Hi Muhammed. You use the papery seed pods correct? I think you can easily mix alum and vegetable tan, but I haven't done it. I would just try it, but keep the strength up and don't leave it in weak solution or put off dealing with it like I did.
Hey thanks for all your tanning videos. They're the best and most detailed series on earth I'm sure. I'm currently tanning wolf, deer, beaver tails and half a cow here in SK Canada. experimenting with tamarac, willow, alder, spruce and birch bark. It would be awsome to see some more video on dyeing leather without using those modern dyes. Black is easy but how about red
Thanks Jerome. I don't do much dyeing of leather, and old info is not that abundant. The reds used were usually Kermes in and Cochineal. They require different mordants I think. You can probably find info on those. I've seen beautiful scarlet buckskin dyed with cochineal. Another factor is that the skins need to be a light color. While we might appreciate a nice brown/red tan now, typically very light colored skins were considered more desireable, because they are easier to over dye.
I've heard you mention fir trees on your property, have you ever bark tanned with them? I know that the Dallas Oregon tannery used a lot of doug fir. Sounds like the mixed in quebracho for cattle hides. I don't have oak trees locally and am about a week in on a deer skin.
i really have not used it. Im spoiled with tan bark oak. I was at Dallas tannery and they definitely used quebracho with the fir. They had a big stack of the extract. I don't remember what the mix was, but it may have been primarily quebracho even. I know they were having a harder time getting the good doug fir bark. Lots of people use it though and it is totally legit.
I know in the past you've mentioned that walnut shells produce more of a stain than a tan. Do you think that if concentrated walnut dye was mixed in with the tan liquor, would it alter the way it was tanned or just make a darker leather? Or would it be more convenient to dye it with lamp black after the fact?
If you want black leather, use Iron acetate over the tan when it's finished tanning and before any final oiling and finishing. Put some rusty old nails or steel wool in vinegar for a month or so. Dilute that so it darkens the leather, but takes about three applications to get it completely black looking. Then rinse out as much excess as you can. If there is any weak tannin solution, I'll put the hide in that to sop up any extra iron. Not sure that actually works, but it seems like a good idea. I think adding walnut to the tan would probably give you a very dark brown. It does have tannin, but from talking to other tanners, it takes a ton of black walnut hulls to actually tan a hide. I haven't tried to dye with BW after the fact, but it would probably work too.
Hey Stephen, I know this is off topic for this video but i wasn’t sure you’d see if I commented on an old video. I’ve been watching your series on making axe handles from logs/trees and was wondering if there are any characteristics of trees with a larger amount of sapwood. I recently cut down an 11inch diameter Hickory to find the sapwood layer only around an inch thick. I don’t like killing hardwoods needlessly so I’m hoping you can help me avoid this in the future. Thanks!
Maybe fast growing trees. A lot of old sources say to use regrowth sap wood. I'm not sure what to tell you about identifying standing trees that are young or have a lot of sap wood. did it have tight growth rings?
@@SkillCult yeah, the growth rings were pretty tight considering it’s diameter. I would have expected it to be much younger. Maybe I’ll try to find one in more loamy soil and with better sunlight exposure. I guess that would promote better/faster growth, wider growth rings and hopefully it’ll be a younger tree. Thanks a lot! Love the videos 👍🏼
I bought a pack of 5 big sheets from home depot. they are for underlayment. I think they were 39.00 but probably more now. That smooth cork hasn't worked well for the cork board though. I think I need a chunkier peice of natural cork bark, which are not so cheap.
@@SkillCult Ever think of processing wine corks? Saw your vid about making your awls, you seemed to have an ample supply of corks! I don't drink, but I still have a lot of well off family in California, I could probably get 55 gallons of used corks in a year! Have been thinking about blending them down, just right, into 1/8" grains, and mixing with some type of adhesive... Barge? Barge thinned... which I don't know how to do, think I need xylene or whatever ultratoxic solvent Barge uses. Side note, we used to buy Barge by the gallon for the leather biz which died on the vine during covid, have a gallon aging out, getting real thick, past honey, past molasses, have you ever effectively solved Barge out? NEway, thanks for the heads up re Home Despot.
So with the methods you used in this series, if the leather was exposed to excess moisture would it become stiff after it dried or would dry soft like a smoked hide would?
Depends on the leather and how many times it gets wet. YOU've see what happens to shoe leather with repeated wetting and drying. But some wetting is okay and it might dry a little stiff like buckskin does, but again, depends on the leather. it is more tanned and crosslinked than smoked buckskin.
@@Regdiggs tanning chemicals bind to the fibers from one binding site to another. That is really what tanning is. tannins or aldehydes in smoke, chromium, all do that. I think it's more or less the more tanned, the more crosslinked.
@@Regdiggs it uses sites on the proteins that also interact with water. so the fibers don't take onto as much, or hold onto it as well. The hides won't glue down adn stiffen as much if they are well crosslinked
@@SkillCult makes sense. When tanning a cow hide after it comes out of the tanning solution how slow should the drying and working process be for the best result? And thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I hope I'm not bugging you.
Question: I've been following along with your vlog series and tanning some buckskin of my own. I left the leather in what turned out to be too weak a bark liquor for long enough to get stinky. The smell has persisted after changing out the solution and letting the hide soak in the new stuff for a couple days. What would you recommend I do with it at this point? It's probably 3/4 or more done tanning now (only a thin light section left in thickest part of the hide).
All you can really do is finish it out and see if it's still smelly. Usually it won't be. But it also depends on the smell. Just healthy fermented bark can be kind of funky and there is all stages between like funky ferments all the way to putrid septic tank smell. Once it is dry and finished out though, you might be surprised. Or not lol. You'll just have to find out. Good luck. Do wash and scud it very thoroughly before drying it out.
@@SkillCult Epic. Thanks heaps. You like natural ingredients for leather processing. I tried something you might like. I harvested some tree sap thinking the tannins would be good but it hardened the leather, this was interesting though. When I mixed the sap with coconut oil and heated it, it created a wax like product that when I applied it to the leather it made a malleable resinous finish. So I hard pressed and worked it into the edge of the leather and it made a shiny resinous rounded edge that bent with the leather without cracking. Effectively protecting the edges. Tree sap and oil, ha ha
Help! Is there any way to reverse hair slippage when bark tanning? I'm thinking adding salt into the tannin bath to arrest any life in the solution but I'm nit sure what that will do to the hide. I wanted hair on but the brew stagnated way quicker then normal, thus hair slippage.
I gained some serious respect for leather when I saw a video on the process done at an industrial level and must say this process is even more eye opening. Thanks.
I agree. A lot to know and a lot of work.
Brilliant. I learned making leather from your videos a couple of years ago already, but it's still interesting to watch those videos. Brings back a lot of memories :)
I can definately relate to the procrastination. Back then i bought a deer rawhide from the internet that i wanted to turn into leather and i still haven't gotten around to tanning it.
yeah, bark tanning in particular breeds procrastination ;)
Luke Baker here, in Kansas. I haven’t commented I’m on any of your stuff yet, but you should know that I’m a HUGE fan of all your work. I have in my lap my second attempt (both successful) at bark tanning, entirely thanks to your videos. Just a small patch of snapping turtle leather, but of huge enjoyment to me (the other is a snake skin). Keep the videos coming. Maybe show us some of your leather work and how you make/sew leather crafts. More “primitive” skills videos too please. Thanks again
Snapping turtle leather? How cool!!
Thanks Luke, it's always good to know people are actually applying this stuff. I'm not much of a leather worker, but I might be able to help with methods of simple leather working that don't require tons of fancy tools. Leatherworkers seem to have the most amount of crazy specialized tools, and they aren't cheap!
@@SkillCult I agree, some leatherwork videos on making simple items with basic tools would be very cool. I think "not much of a leatherwork" is somewhat of an understatement, I am really impressed by the English leather mug you made a video about. Very SkillCult'ish project by not requiring a ton of tools and materials and the process being pretty intuitive yet resulting in a pretty refined and useful finished item
Thanks for the videos Steven, I was looking forward to see it for a while - especially the flattening with the sleekers part, and that cork thing at work... couldn't get to it so far, summer nights being so short. It's immensely helpful... I've got a 220 liter barrel full of tanned dried hides awaiting finish. Mostly goat, some horse and donkey. I have tried flattening hides on plywood before, and now I can see what I did wrong (rough plywood, hot and dry weather, metal sleeker too blunt).
Aint nothing even close to this level of good information anywhere. It would have gotten ten thousand times more views in the world I would have liked to live in!
Thanks Nimrod. for thick hides, like maybe even donkey, you might get away with plywood. it's actually nice to have some texture to grip onto the skin. But anything thin at all on rough surfaces, and you already know what happens I guess. if you don't have one, make a stone, tile, or glass sleeker. Even hardwood is okay. You really kind of need that rounded smooth "edge" with the ends gently turned up to get the grain dead smooth. And yeah, slow drying is critical. If you think about it, it makes sense. if the water leaves the outside layer of skin too fast, it is going to stay fat inside, while the exterior is trying to shrink, resulting in some kind of unflat drying. The heat is a real problem, and I'm sure it's brutal there. You probably have goat and sheep fat, so use at least 50% of that, and if you have a cellar or anyplace cool, or can do it in cooler weather, it's much better.
@@SkillCult Yeah, I've got lots of goat tallow at hand, hardly anyone in my family will eat anything fried in it, no matter my insistence that they could get used to it...lacking sufficient cellar space, I'll wait for cooler weather for this kind of finishing. I would imagine november will do here.
Thanks!
Love the series, thank you so much for producing this.
These tanoaks provide the best color. Have been to California once and tried to bring a seedling back to europe. But it didn't made it even to the airport.
Thanks to you I've now learned how to go from pelt to leather, just lack the experience, also if it's not a bother could you show us what you use all the leather for?
I may do some on using the leather. Still thinking about what to do with them. Probably at least the cattle hide. I'm more of a tanner than a leather worker though.
Hope you're doing well out there in CA. turns out MA is in the opposite of a drought. My predictive skills are garbage hehe. But your Polish Linguisa seeds have turned into beautiful plants, set fruit 2 weeks ago and they're ripening now. Blight is coming on fast though.
Polish Liguisa gets hammered by blight here. I have high hopes for Zapotec resisting it, but we'll see. it would be awesome to have a resistant variety similar to Polish Linguisa and Blue Beech. Water is getting low here. just hoping we squeak by and get rain this year.
@@SkillCult with the amount of rain we got, the lilacs are even getting something fungal. Hard to believe anything could withstand this much wet. Huge year for mushrooms though. Hope you avoid wildfires too!
I saw that crinkly neck and my weird brain envisioned it in some sort of mixed media piece of art. Love the shape and texture
Yeah, it's very cool.
Excellent, thank you very much for the effort. This Oak tanned piece looks like acacia nilotica seeds tanned in color. We use the seeds for traditional tanning in the Sahara region due to the lack of trees.
By the way, I would really love to see the result of bark tanning an alum tanned piece as I have a lamb fur coated in the alum paste at the moment. I believe alum tanning is a fake unstable tanning that I would love to veg tan again once I have enough acacia seeds. So keep the awesome work 🙂
Hi Muhammed. You use the papery seed pods correct? I think you can easily mix alum and vegetable tan, but I haven't done it. I would just try it, but keep the strength up and don't leave it in weak solution or put off dealing with it like I did.
Hey thanks for all your tanning videos. They're the best and most detailed series on earth I'm sure. I'm currently tanning wolf, deer, beaver tails and half a cow here in SK Canada. experimenting with tamarac, willow, alder, spruce and birch bark. It would be awsome to see some more video on dyeing leather without using those modern dyes. Black is easy but how about red
Thanks Jerome. I don't do much dyeing of leather, and old info is not that abundant. The reds used were usually Kermes in and Cochineal. They require different mordants I think. You can probably find info on those. I've seen beautiful scarlet buckskin dyed with cochineal. Another factor is that the skins need to be a light color. While we might appreciate a nice brown/red tan now, typically very light colored skins were considered more desireable, because they are easier to over dye.
I've heard you mention fir trees on your property, have you ever bark tanned with them? I know that the Dallas Oregon tannery used a lot of doug fir. Sounds like the mixed in quebracho for cattle hides. I don't have oak trees locally and am about a week in on a deer skin.
i really have not used it. Im spoiled with tan bark oak. I was at Dallas tannery and they definitely used quebracho with the fir. They had a big stack of the extract. I don't remember what the mix was, but it may have been primarily quebracho even. I know they were having a harder time getting the good doug fir bark. Lots of people use it though and it is totally legit.
I know in the past you've mentioned that walnut shells produce more of a stain than a tan. Do you think that if concentrated walnut dye was mixed in with the tan liquor, would it alter the way it was tanned or just make a darker leather? Or would it be more convenient to dye it with lamp black after the fact?
If you want black leather, use Iron acetate over the tan when it's finished tanning and before any final oiling and finishing. Put some rusty old nails or steel wool in vinegar for a month or so. Dilute that so it darkens the leather, but takes about three applications to get it completely black looking. Then rinse out as much excess as you can. If there is any weak tannin solution, I'll put the hide in that to sop up any extra iron. Not sure that actually works, but it seems like a good idea. I think adding walnut to the tan would probably give you a very dark brown. It does have tannin, but from talking to other tanners, it takes a ton of black walnut hulls to actually tan a hide. I haven't tried to dye with BW after the fact, but it would probably work too.
@@SkillCult I appreciate the response!
Hey Stephen, I know this is off topic for this video but i wasn’t sure you’d see if I commented on an old video. I’ve been watching your series on making axe handles from logs/trees and was wondering if there are any characteristics of trees with a larger amount of sapwood. I recently cut down an 11inch diameter Hickory to find the sapwood layer only around an inch thick. I don’t like killing hardwoods needlessly so I’m hoping you can help me avoid this in the future. Thanks!
Maybe fast growing trees. A lot of old sources say to use regrowth sap wood. I'm not sure what to tell you about identifying standing trees that are young or have a lot of sap wood. did it have tight growth rings?
@@SkillCult yeah, the growth rings were pretty tight considering it’s diameter. I would have expected it to be much younger. Maybe I’ll try to find one in more loamy soil and with better sunlight exposure. I guess that would promote better/faster growth, wider growth rings and hopefully it’ll be a younger tree. Thanks a lot! Love the videos 👍🏼
Big thin sheets of cork are cheap? SOURCE?
The Best. 💪
I bought a pack of 5 big sheets from home depot. they are for underlayment. I think they were 39.00 but probably more now. That smooth cork hasn't worked well for the cork board though. I think I need a chunkier peice of natural cork bark, which are not so cheap.
@@SkillCult Ever think of processing wine corks? Saw your vid about making your awls, you seemed to have an ample supply of corks! I don't drink, but I still have a lot of well off family in California, I could probably get 55 gallons of used corks in a year!
Have been thinking about blending them down, just right, into 1/8" grains, and mixing with some type of adhesive... Barge? Barge thinned... which I don't know how to do, think I need xylene or whatever ultratoxic solvent Barge uses.
Side note, we used to buy Barge by the gallon for the leather biz which died on the vine during covid, have a gallon aging out, getting real thick, past honey, past molasses, have you ever effectively solved Barge out?
NEway, thanks for the heads up re Home Despot.
So with the methods you used in this series, if the leather was exposed to excess moisture would it become stiff after it dried or would dry soft like a smoked hide would?
Depends on the leather and how many times it gets wet. YOU've see what happens to shoe leather with repeated wetting and drying. But some wetting is okay and it might dry a little stiff like buckskin does, but again, depends on the leather. it is more tanned and crosslinked than smoked buckskin.
@@SkillCult what do you mean cross-linked?
@@Regdiggs tanning chemicals bind to the fibers from one binding site to another. That is really what tanning is. tannins or aldehydes in smoke, chromium, all do that. I think it's more or less the more tanned, the more crosslinked.
@@Regdiggs it uses sites on the proteins that also interact with water. so the fibers don't take onto as much, or hold onto it as well. The hides won't glue down adn stiffen as much if they are well crosslinked
@@SkillCult makes sense. When tanning a cow hide after it comes out of the tanning solution how slow should the drying and working process be for the best result? And thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I hope I'm not bugging you.
Question: I've been following along with your vlog series and tanning some buckskin of my own. I left the leather in what turned out to be too weak a bark liquor for long enough to get stinky. The smell has persisted after changing out the solution and letting the hide soak in the new stuff for a couple days. What would you recommend I do with it at this point? It's probably 3/4 or more done tanning now (only a thin light section left in thickest part of the hide).
All you can really do is finish it out and see if it's still smelly. Usually it won't be. But it also depends on the smell. Just healthy fermented bark can be kind of funky and there is all stages between like funky ferments all the way to putrid septic tank smell. Once it is dry and finished out though, you might be surprised. Or not lol. You'll just have to find out. Good luck. Do wash and scud it very thoroughly before drying it out.
@@SkillCult thanks, you're one of a kind. Love the content, keep up the good work!
Would the rolling method your using work to soften bark tanned cattle hide so that it's at least semi-pliable?
Yes, just keep your expectations in check. If you can, test it on an extra piece first. But if you can break it in, this is a good method to do it.
@@SkillCult
Epic. Thanks heaps.
You like natural ingredients for leather processing. I tried something you might like.
I harvested some tree sap thinking the tannins would be good but it hardened the leather, this was interesting though.
When I mixed the sap with coconut oil and heated it, it created a wax like product that when I applied it to the leather it made a malleable resinous finish. So I hard pressed and worked it into the edge of the leather and it made a shiny resinous rounded edge that bent with the leather without cracking. Effectively protecting the edges. Tree sap and oil, ha ha
Help! Is there any way to reverse hair slippage when bark tanning? I'm thinking adding salt into the tannin bath to arrest any life in the solution but I'm nit sure what that will do to the hide. I wanted hair on but the brew stagnated way quicker then normal, thus hair slippage.
Probably not. You could try alum.