Really nice looking armor work.
Now, as for fleshing hides.
My main job working for my grandfather for two years was fleshing hides.
Here is the method we used in a full time, professional taxidermy shop.
Lay the hide flesh side up.
Cover the hide entirely in mill run grade feed salt.
You can get it in large bags, and its coarser than table salt, but easier to use than rock salt.
Cover the entire hide until you cannot see flesh- a depth of a quarter to half an inch.
As my grandfather put it, you cannot use too much salt- but its very easy to not use enough.
leave it overnight.
the next day, hang it for a while to let the water drain out.
(This procedure assumes a full sized cowhide, but its equally applicable to any large hide from a hooved animal. My grandfather handled and fleshed trophy hair-on hides himself.)
Arrange your hide after it has drained flesh side up.
We used an angled wooden beam for fleshing- the classic one you see in any illustration from a tanner's or taxidermist.
Ours had the point of the beam end at about belt buckle height.
Take a drawknife, and begin fleshing by drawing away from you, scraping the flesh off.
I advise a dull edged one to start- it takes more force as you are essentially tearing or ripping the fat off the hide, but you are less likely to cut holes in the hide itself. (Accidental holing happens a lot in fleshing no matter how experienced you are, once you start to get tired...)
My grandfather had one made from an old, broken parade sword blade with the typical blunt edge of an issue sword.
The flesh will be obvious- it will be a bit shrunken by now, and peels off rather easily.
You can also do plains indian style- peg the hide out flat, and scrap the flesh off with a wooden scraper.
After fleshing, we salted again and then hung the hide to dry completely.
We sent stuff out to a professional tannery, so I can't offer much advice on the actual tanning process; except to say that my grandfather tanned deer scalps for plaque mounts by soaking the hides in a 50/50 mixture of salt and alum in water.
A week in the pickle, as he called it, and the hide was cured.
(It can stay in the pickle almost indefinitely...He had some in the urn that had been there for years.)
Once dried, it would become hard as a rock- but you could rub or work oil or glycerine into the flesh side of it, and it would become soft and pliable.
I have been told motor oil of all things can be used to do the same thing- but have not tried it myself.
The point is that there are literally dozens of ways to tan hides.
Soaking in Oak chips/tannic acid. (Or even a mixture made from tea.)
Urine curing.
Sulphuric acid was the old method for commercial hair-on tanning, and the industry switched to a Chromium based solution. (I do not know the formula.)
The reason was that sulphuric acid tanned hides become brittle after enough time, and begin to disintegrate...In about 20-30 years.
(I had a pile of hides my grandfather gave me that had started to do this...Most of them got tossed in the trash because they tore like paper.)
sad...Had a cougar, some lynx, bear and a nice wolf hide...But they were all falling apart.
Theres brain tanning, simple drying in the sun after fleshing, (Which makes rawhide,) and I'd heard of some other weird methods I can't recall offhand.
Taxidermy supply companies sell home tanning solutions based on citric acid, made from orange peel.
Theres so many ways to tan hides into leather, that all you really need to do is pick whatever works best for you and get the materials needed.
Hope this rather rambling bit of information was helpful.
-Badger-
I try to keep it tidy. It looked terrible when I first got it, China isn't well known for cleanliness. And yes, that IS a pink upside-down fan hanging from a wire.
