Your Going On Safari Somewhere, Anywhere, Things To Watch From A Taxidermist View…

[BRICKBURN]

F10 is definitely the superior product to use. Interestingly I have , as an experiment , soaked my own personal game skins overnight in a saline solution , and then hung them to dry. No dry salting afterwards. They all came out and tanned perfect.
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Jan, I would be interested to see what would happen if you stored them for a while after this treatment.

I would wonder if the skins would develop some rot in storage. Just an experiment.

 

[BRICKBURN]

Interesting thread.

In Europe salt is not used at all. The animal is caped there and then, from the sternum to the atlas joint (head left on) and put in the chiller to hang over night (around 2-5 Degrees Celsius), then well wrapped up to stop freeze burn and frozen. Then delivered to the taxidermist and he will skin the head and any remaining flesh on the cape.

That's because of that darned climate. If you hung them to dry, it would never happen. They would be pools of goo on the floor in a month.

 

[JimP]

Interesting thread.

In Europe salt is not used at all. The animal is caped there and then, from the sternum to the atlas joint (head left on) and put in the chiller to hang over night (around 2-5 Degrees Celsius), then well wrapped up to stop freeze burn and frozen. Then delivered to the taxidermist and he will skin the head and any remaining flesh on the cape.

That's because of that darned climate. If you hung them to dry, it would never happen. They would be pools of goo on the floor in a month.

I would also say that is because a taxidermist is a lot closer than they may be in a lot of the countries in Africa..

We do the same thing here in the states, just cape out the animal and head to the freezer or taxidermist. But if the hide or cape is going to have to be stored for any length of time other than in a freezer then you are going to need the salt treatment.

 

[jand]

Jan, I would be interested to see what would happen if you stored them for a while after this treatment.

I would wonder if the skins would develop some rot in storage. Just an experiment.

The skins in question were tanned 6 months later. No other treatment whatsoever. Came out perfect.

 

[harden]

I would never not resalt them after the soak. Just my professional view.

 

[BRICKBURN]

In this process does the salt actually infiltrate the hide pores and remain or act as an agent to wick away water/moisture?
Does the salt remaining act as a bactericide?

 

[jeff]

Some US tanneries want a 1/4 cup of salt in the soak for re hydration of their dry tan.

 

[jand]

I would never not resalt them after the soak. Just my professional view.

Absolutely Dennis. 100 % correct . The point is that it was an experiment to test the effectiveness of soaking. It is extremely effective and when re salting the skins after the soak , even with rock salt , it has been a fail proof method used by me the past 2 decades.

 

[harden]

In this process does the salt actually infiltrate the hide pores and remain or act as an agent to wick away water/moisture?
Does the salt remaining act as a bactericide?

If you put a raw skin in a solution , it can't absorb much salt. It's already saturated with natural oils and moisture of the skin.
The reason you USE salt it to pull the natural protiens and moisture OUT of the skin. The Protiens that decompose the skin.
You can AIR dry a skin when you do that you are removing the moisture that the proteins need to work. They are still in the skin but have no way to work anymore. Trappers air dry skins all the time. But those skins are mainly used for the fur industry and the tanning IS COMPLETELY different that taxidermy tanning.

 

[harden]

Shumba, Glad to hear that is was an experiment.
Just don't want someone to start doing this all the time. !!
Glad to hear you do resalt...Your starting to worry me....LOL LOL

 

[Britt Beck]

Thank you very much

 

[PaulT]

For what it's worth, i used a "brine" (salt solution) for curing buffalo capes whilst working in my tropical camp, Northern Australia.

For a brine to work it needs to be at, or beyond, total saturation point of salt per liter of water being used. To get to this point i would continue to mix the salt in the water until it wouldn't dissolve any more.
Another useful point that seemed to help the brine was that after a thorough fleshing and splitting of the hides we would wash the flesh, and fur, sides with a water washer.
High pressure jetting would expose the hair folicals and prepare them to recieve the brine.
Many times, when a bull was shot late on a particular day, we would treat the cape as described above and leave them in the brine overnight and salt them the following day.

Never lost one and in fact the brine seemed to help cure the hides quicker and take less salt than ones not treated as such.

For what it's worth.