Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground, brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

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Welcome to Common Ground, I'm producer/director Scott Knudson.

This week we continue with Part two of three of Nate Johnson Hide Tanning.

We're essentially going to make a tube here, so this must be a deer that I shot probably two years ago or maybe it was ..yeah, two years ago - finally catching up to it.

It should be big enough for pants.

They call this wringing.

Wringing the hide.

See it kind of bubbling up?We're doing two things; one, we're drying it out, getting the water out of it, but we're also forcing the solution through the pores of the hide and that gets it really in there, gets those fibers coated.

You can pull pretty hard.

This is a step where it's good to be patient, like many things in life, just let it drip.

All right, I'm gonna go back the other direction.. so same location, just going back the other way.

So rotate it a quarter turn, repeat Our goal right now is to get as much moisture out as possible.

Once we get it out, we take it off the beam here and stretch it back open.

If this were a hide that I was doing this for the first time, I would stretch it open and then we'd repeat this process.

We'd let it dry out a little bit, and then we'd brain it and wring it, and I usually do that three (3) times but since this has already been done maybe twice, maybe only once.. we'll see, I might, I might do it one more time but first we'll get all the water out and then open it back up, stretch it back open a quarter turn.. not much moisture left in this one, that's good.

So this is really pulling open - it's got a lot of stretch to it, so after a couple brainings, we're obviously different than the rawhide you'd seen earlier.

The change is well underway now, we got it stretched back open; no longer dealing with rawhide.

This is totally different, and I'm just going around getting all the fibers stretched back open and pulled open - they kind of turn this whitish color once they're pulled open, getting all those edges opened up.

Okay, I think i'm gonna brain it one more time, just to be safe.

I'm gonna put it back in the solution.. most hides I do it three times and I can't remember if I already did this once or twice so I'm gonna probably just gonna put it back in So that, if you got this, I'll show you when I squeeze this, you'll see lots of air bubbles coming through the skin ..that's a good sign when you start to squeeze the skin and the air pushes through and makes bubbles that's a good sign ..that means that the fibers are opened up and that means the solution is really penetrating.

We're just going to do this whole routine again.

So this beaver hide has been soaking in wood ash for two days and in the warm weather it's going really fast, sometimes it takes longer but I checked it this morning and it should be ready to go, the fur is loosened up.

Just squeeze this out so it doesn't drip all over me and then also, I'll just save this and keep reusing this for the rest of the summer and fall for deer hides , so I always give it a little check and just kind of tug on the fur and it pulls right out so that's how I know that this hide has been bucked.

We call it bucking, so it's been soaked in alkaline long enough that the fur is loosened and we'll go over to the beam and scrape ..get this fur off..so I got my beam over here.

The idea here is we want to get rid of the fur, but not damage what's called the grain layer of the skin, and that's a smooth layer right underneath..

I'm just using my fingers.. and if I were going to scrape a deer hide and I wanted to make buckskin and remove this smooth layer so they get a fuzzy buckskin, or suede, some people call it, then I'd be using my scraper - pushing hard and scraping off this layer of skin right below the hair - but since I want to maintain this, we're making full grain leather here like boot or belt leather, I'm just working with my hands so that I don't damage that grain layer, and sometimes if the hair is a little sticky, you can take a clump of fur and get any last remnants off there, but this is coming really cleanly so that just means the hide was at the right stage from the bucking.

See - there's a sticky spot of fur - I'll just.. some people do this with a wooden tool, but I like my fingers, because then I feel like there's no chance of damaging that green layer.

You could put your hands on it without gloves but long-term exposure you'd get an alkali irritation for sure.

Sometimes if I touch it with my bare hands you can feel it's really slippery when you rub your fingers together and thats that alkalinity, so if I just do touch it briefly, then I just make sure to wash my hands with soap so that I don't get irritated skin.

To some people this may seem like .. oh he's scrubbing with a little bit of beaver fur to help get rid of the the minute remnants of beaver fur, but I just taught you the million dollar trick and you thought it was no big deal, and that's using beaver fur to get rid of beaver fur, I mean, it's just one of those little things that works and it's coming out real well - there's a couple, well, one, patch of damaged grain along the edge which is fine, and this was - there's also a scar in here from fighting, springtime male fighting, but yeah, hair is coming off cleanly, I think it was at the perfect stage for this.

Of course if you don't buck it long enough then the hair is really difficult to just slide off and if you buck it for too long, too much soaking in the wood ash, and the hide will start to disintegrate.

I'm just right now cleaning up, looking for any spots where any hair patches might have been.

I've been sticky, so just getting rid of any little under fur.

Just a little, a little cleanup, all right, something like that.

We're underway now.. we've got an alkaline hide from the wood ash soaking, and so we need to neutralize it; we need to take the alkalinity out.

Right now after it's been soaked, it's kind of rubbery, it doesn't stretch, the fibers are kind of sucked together by the alkalinity.. you can either put it in a stream of moving water or you can soak it in an acid solution.

I like to just use a little bit of white vinegar mixed in with water and that will start to return it back to a neutral state.

If you don't bring it back to neutral, it won't tan well, so it is a crucial step.

So there's one cut in here, and there's an old scar, and probably another fighting scar there, and you know there's still a story of the animal's life in this hide.

We've got our boiled sumac leaves in here, brought it up to a boil, and oh I suppose I let it boil for an hour, and it's simmered for longer than that too.

There's our tannin "liquor", they call it.

Yeah, if you were to taste this, it'd be really astringent, so if you've ever tasted an acorn, it kind of makes your mouth pucker.

Wow, it's really strong - that's one way to tell if your "bark liquor", or your "tannin liquor", - is strong enough.

Just taste it and spit it out , and the color is not "necessarily" indicative of the strength - though, though it is - there is correlation, but you can have a strong color without that many tannins, so really, it's good to taste it and check it - but this is, this is super concentrated, so this is the first boil of the bark and leaves and obviously, it's got the most tannins in it, it's coming out incredibly strong - and this is what we use to finish the hides.

I'll be doing two more boilings with this same batch of bark and leaves - the second boiling, of course, will be less strong, and the third boiling, with different water, will be pretty weak.. so I'll have three different containers from each boiling, so my third boiling, the weakest solution, is what you start all your hides in.

If you start it in the strongest solution, those tannins are sucked in and absorbed by the outside of the skin and create a barrier, so that the center of the skin does not get tanned.

So we start it in the third boil, and that allows the tannins to go all the way to the middle, and you basically have a tanned shell and a rawhide center - it wouldn't soften.

This is my strongest solution of tannins, so this is from the first boil - this is where I'm finishing hides, and I've got some in here finishing right now.

It's really dark, this has been soaking for probably a month almost, and boy, it's got to be getting close.. the best test to see if it's done is to find the thickest spot of the hide, which is, on most animals is either the rump or the neck; I'm just going to cut a little slit here and look and see if the color has worked its way all the way in.

It's not super obvious, it's still lighter colored in the middle and this gets really tricky, it's not going to look the same color in the middle as it does on the outside - this really dark rich brown - but it's not white anymore.

I think this still needs longer so I'm going to let it keep going.

I have some here that have been here longer - I'd like to see a little more color in there working its way to the center so I'm gonna let this one soak for a while longer.

I'm gonna check and see if there's one in here that's closer to done.

Now even though this one's lighter in color, this has been soaking longer and that other hide was in a different mixture of tannins it started in - it just, I used some different barks and it just got dyed a lighter color, which does not mean it's more tanned - it just got more colored.

This one has actually been in quite a bit longer and I'm going to check here too.. now this is more what I like to see - here it's much more - the color from the outside edges is penetrated much further in - it's still lighter colored here but it's not white rawhide.

That color is much more penetrated in - it's still lightish in the center of the skin but it's not white like rawhide and it's a little bit of a darker hue than that other one I looked at.

I would consider this one mostly done, but I'm still going to give it a couple more days and just because I re-strengthen the tannins now, so there's a lot of really strong tannins in this, and, you know, the thin parts are surely.. the belly's always thinner.. here's a piece of belly skin and that's penetrated all the way through, so that's.. they call that "struck through" as the term, so that struck through, the tannins have reached the center, and it's fully tanned in the thinner spots but I'm going to give this..

I think ..just a few more days.

It takes a while.. week maybe..

I don't know, not in a hurry - I just want to make sure it's done properly.

I've got four hides in this and it'll really soak up those tannins.

Four hides - I'll come back here and in four days and the water will be considerably lighter colored - it will absorb a lot of the tannins and the dye.

You look at the coloring in the bark, so try to stir them every day.

Here's that beaver that's been soaking in some vinegar and water - it's actually starting to grow again - it's getting bigger, as it goes to neutral.

It was all swollen together and as we start to neutralize it, it'll get bigger but it's still swollen, it's still alkaline, it's just kind of rubbery and there's there's no stretch to it, it's just tight.

I think i'm going to switch out this water for some fresh water and put a little more vinegar in there and keep rinsing it.

a little more vinegar I'll just keep adding vinegar periodically and checking it over the next couple hours and sometimes it takes most of a day.

I go slowly.

Well we've got our brained hide here for brain tanning and I've just had it in the freezer so before we get ready to soften it, I need to deal with some of these bullet holes.

I guess I already sewed up the entrance hole - this is where the bullet entered here, the entrance hole, which is pretty small , and then here on the other side - this would be the exit hole - much larger - the bullet has expanded, so we got to sew this up.

Some people don't sew their holes up but I find it works much better to sew them up in advance, so I'm just going to sew it up from the inside of the hide - this is the flesh side, and I'm just going to clean up these edges and kind of straighten it out a little bit so it's less of an abrupt curve.

I've just got some, so I've got here some deer back straps in, This is the fibers that run along the back strap of the deer, and I often will use artificial sinew sometimes, but if I'm trying to be super homemade about what I'm doing - then I use deer sinew.

With all my fur sewing, I try to use actual sinew, and it's, uh yeah , the ancient thread, super strong, strips apart into layers - kind of just gradually pulling it apart.

We save all the sinew from the deer that we hunt - got to get it just the right thickness - so yep, just getting it wet and then I'll twist it up here.

There's an ancient thread, super strong, and I like to sew with a "sharp", as opposed to a "glover's", needle - it just makes a smaller hole.

A Glover's needle has a triangular tip and cuts a hole as you sew - they're made for leather.

On the other hand, it also cuts a hole as you sew, so in this case, this hide's about to be stretched and stressed and if we use a glover's needle, the holes will tend to get bigger.

The Sharp needle, on the other hand, pokes its way through without cutting a hole, so overhand knot twice through, a little stopper knot, I'll leave that loop open and we've got a warm day here - I should probably work fast so this hide doesn't start to dry on me but I'll kind of keep it bunched up so it doesn't dry, I'm just going to do a simple whip stitch.

Sinew does leave a slightly larger diameter for real sinew than it would if I were using a synthetic thread, so it gets a little harder to pull through.

My understanding, sinew was just, just like I did it - wedded and twisted and that's your thread - so I end just by, rather than tying a knot, I just backstitch three stitches through the same holes, and then that will create enough friction the stitches shouldn't come loose.

Just leave that long for now and I can cut it short later.

this is it, and even though it's kind of funky now, as we soften it, it will all stretch and lay flat so I've got to make holes and I'm going to lace this up in a frame right here and I've got to just go around and make holes for the string.

Cut your slits parallel , maybe every six inches, I don't know.

Every so often there's a hole there already, I'll just use that.

You don't want to be too close to the edge of the hide when you do this, otherwise it'll just rip out, like this hole is probably going to rip out, but I'll use it anyway, so maybe three quarters of an inch in from the edge.

I always try to put my holes on - if there's a projection in the hide - put the hole there.

Like the bowline on a bite, if you don't know how to tie a bowline knot - go ahead and learn and it'll change your life.

I'm going to start by just loosely lacing it up and I'll go back and tighten it all up once I've got it where I want it.

Now to get warm!

If you want to soften two hides at once, then well, I've got a frame here for another hide and you can do - lean them together - and do them at the same time, but I just have this one ready to go.

I will often do two at once, it's just more efficient, and I've got here my trusty softening stake - which is just a pole with the end sharpened roughly with an axe and a knife.

The whole idea here is we want to stretch this hide the whole time it's drying.

If we don't keep all the fibers moving and pulled apart they'll stiffen up - as long as we keep them pushed and moving and stretching while the skin is drying - they should remain soft, so I just go around the hide with my softening stick until it's done and you don't have to stretch them out on a frame like this - you can just do them by hand and you can put a stake in the ground and pull it over a stake, or a cable and a tree and pull it around a cable or just tug on it with friends but this stretches the hide open and it dries really fast and then I'm just going to go along, and the edges dry first because it's hard to work the edges with my stake, I just need to do that by hand, and especially at first those edges are already drying, and I just need to pull them open and keep them from getting stiff.

By keeping the edges soft, these holes are less likely to rip out.

And then repeat.

I know the hide still has moisture in it because when I push it, it leaves a clear line and the indent from my stake stays in there, and as the hide loses moisture, those strong indents will start to fade.

Thanks so much for watching.

Join us again next week for part three of "Nate Johnson Hide Tanning".

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Production funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Common Ground is brought to you by The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people, November 4, 2008.

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