Skinning: do the cuts first, then put the knife away and peel the skin off.

Fleshing: once the skin has been pulled off lay it on the beam and scrape the flesh off.

White, unsmoked buckskin is soft and pliable.

The thickness of a kudu skin makes it great for moccasins and vellies.

The finished buckskin can be used to make a variety of articles.

Neil Meggersee explains how to brain-tan an animal hide to obtain a unique material called buckskin.

Is it possible? To use just the brains of the animal to get nice soft leather? Well, yes and no! Can you go out hunting, see your animal, point and shoot? Yes and no. That is in essence what happens, but there are many fundamental steps one has to take to get to that point – many pitfalls, many tricks and a bit of experience. Speak to someone who has never hunted and they will say “Yeah, you just point at it and shoot, right!” Same as brain tanning: “You just use the brains”.

But let’s start at the very beginning. What is brain-tanned leather? Well, it’s actually called buckskin. Buckskin is an animal hide turned into a useable product that is very breathable. Take an impala skin that’s been brain-tanned, hold it to your mouth and you can breathe though it. This is unlike commercially tanned leather, which is less breathable. It is not raw hide, nappa or leather with the grain (epidermis) still on. It is similar to split suede.

For your first attempt, try the skin from an impala or from any small to medium thin-skinned animal. Don’t try tanning a kudu hide and definitely not one from a wildebeest or bush pig. The thick skins are extremely difficult to learn the steps on.

Skinning
First, let’s skin the animal. Very important: put the knife away. We’re going to pull the skin off by peeling it away from the meat, which should separate relatively easily. If it does not and you have to use your knife a lot, be extremely careful not to cut into the skin. Cut only the membrane. Roll a piece of the skin to make it like a sort of sausage – a handle to hold on to – and use your full weight to pull the skin off.

Fleshing
Fleshing is done on a beam. The tools of the trade are either a draw knife or a thickness planer blade with handles attached (you can use a sharpened rib bone or ulna for this task, just as you could cut down a mighty redwood with a stone axe instead of a chain saw – but it would take longer). Scrape all the fat and meat off using long strokes and pushing down. Scrape, don’t cut. Do the whole hide.

Bucking
Bucking helps to dissolve and break down the natural glues in the hide that hold the fibres together. You will never get all of the glue out but we definitely aim for most. Bucking also causes the skin to swell and expose the grain. Fill a 25-litre bucket with water and wood ash or lime (the kind you use in lime wash). Do the egg test by dropping an egg into the solution. It should just float on the surface. If it sinks, add more ash or lime. If it floats on its side the solution is too strong, so add more water. Stir the skin in and leave for three to four days, stirring every morning and evening.

Graining
Place the skin back on the beam, but this time with the hair side up. You will note that the hair falls out relatively easily. Now comes one of the hardest steps – scraping the grain off. The grain is a definite layer and must be scraped off using downward pressure. Find a rhythm and keep going. When you get tired, put the skin back in the bucket and take a break. At this stage it is worth remembering that you will gain nothing by venting your anger at your loved ones or pets every time you cut yourself or the skin while it slops around on the beam. You won’t get it right first time, and it’s not their fault! Persevere. My first impala skin took me six hours to scrape and I ended up cutting it so many times that the end piece was about the size of a handkerchief. With practice you can do a whole impala-size skin in 30 minutes. Be careful behind the front legs and on the belly where the skin is very thin, as these places tear very easily. Sometimes it’s better to leave a bit of grain than end up with a big hole. This is why a well-skinned hide is a pleasure to scrape. Any knife-score marks under the skin will result in streaks of grain impossible to scrape no matter how hard you try.

Rinsing
Rinse as much ash or lime off as possible in fresh water. The best way to rinse is to leave the hide in a stream overnight. It is vital to get as much of the alkali solution out as possible and bring the skin back to neutral. The skin should feel soft and pliable when properly rinsed – not rubbery and swollen. I even go as far as putting the skin in the washing machine with normal laundry detergent and letting the machine do a wash, rinse and spin cycle (a highly covert operation, make no mistake, and if it weren’t for the fact that I know the Missus will never read this magazine, I wouldn’t share this with you. Anyone caught educating my wife will be turned into a nice pair of winter moccasins).

Wringing
For the wringing step hang the skin over a branch, with the branch dividing it into 20 per cent and 80 per cent parts. Then take the long side (80 per cent) and bring it over the front of the short side so as to make the skin like a big flat loop or tube. Then start at one side and roll the hide to centre and do the same with the other side. You are now left with what looks like two rolls going around the branch. Place a stout stick in the loop and twist.

Acidifying
This step is optional, but do it. Take about 15 litres of water and put in half a cup of vinegar. Let the skin sit in this for about half an hour. This changes the pH to slightly acidic to enable easier absorption of the dressing. Wring again and then it’s back to the beam. Scrape everything again. Just a quick once-over on both sides, just to make sure anything that shouldn’t be there, isn’t.

Dressing
OK, I know its called brain tanning, but there are alternatives to brains. Sometimes you get a few skins, but you don’t get any brains. Sometimes the dog gets them before you do. Or heaven forbid, you fail to camouflage them well enough in the farthest corner of the fridge and your minister of finance takes up her new position as minister of war. Dressing is used to lubricate what’s left of the glue bonds in the hide. Natural fats and oils act perfectly. To illustrate this, take a piece of masking tape and spray the sticky side with Q20. Magic – the glue doesn’t stick any more. It’s not gone, it’s just useless. With brain tanning you basically want to reach a balance: neutralise the glue, but don’t end up with a gooey oil rag.

The following are common dressings:
• ½ kg brains mixed with two litres of warm water; or
• Twelve eggs mixed with two litres of warm water; or
• ½ cup Neats foot oil mixed with ¼ cup Sunlight, mixed with five litres of warm water.
On thick hides like kudu I personally prefer Neats foot oil to the others, because one has to dress the hide several times before it’s velvety soft, and brains and eggs don’t keep very well.
The hide at this stage should be relatively dry, but still damp. Too dry and the glue sets and stops the dressing penetrating to the middle (think of wiping up spills in the kitchen – a damp cloth absorbs the liquid much more easily than a bone dry one). Take the hide and immerse it in the dressing, making sure that the entire hide is covered, and leave it overnight. Wring out in the morning, but catch as much of the dressing in your container as possible. Stretch the hide this way and that. Any part that looks rubbery and wrinkled should get special attention. Stretch those areas open and redress them. The hide should be sloppy and somewhat slimy at this stage.

Softening
Book time off work, take a sabbatical, or do whatever it takes, but this step is the most important and requires your undivided attention. For this step the only thing you listen to is the hide. On thin skins it takes a few hours, but thick ones can take days. There are two different ways to soften: by hand or by frame. I’ll expand on both in a later article but for now I’ll share what works for me: a combination of the two techniques. Start by sewing up any holes. Holes left unchecked can tear. After that I drape the hide over the fence in the sun and keep checking it every few minutes. As the hide dries you want to work it by stretching it and keeping the fibre structure of the hide open. On a small hide this can be done over your knees, pulling the hide between your fingers all the way to the edges and allowing them to slide off. This is usually done sitting in the sun and day dreaming about your next hunt. Only stretch till the whole hide is soft. Pay special attention to parts of the hide that start to stiffen – usually the neck and rump area. Work these often. Pulling the hide back and forth over a cable works well, especially on larger and thicker hides. Work the hide only as much as is necessary, then take a break. With experience you’ll learn to work the hide each time just before it starts to stiffen. Don’t stop till the hide is 100 per cent dry. You’ll find that the time between working the hide gets progressively shorter the drier the hide gets. In the beginning you’ll stretch it say every half hour, and towards the end it’ll be every five minutes. If you’ve left it too long between stretching and you have a stiff spot, put a bit more dressing on that area and start again. Abrade the surface as you go. Pumice stone works well, or even sandpaper. When working large skins I hang them from hooks on the rafters of the garage and pull the hide in all directions, sanding with a sanding block as it gets drier. I also occasionally break the fibres over an axe clamped in the vice. If you have to take a break and leave the hide say overnight, roll it up and put it in a plastic bag. This lets you return to it at your convenience. If done correctly you’ll end up with a snow white, soft piece of chamois. But if it gets wet the natural oils will wash out and you’ll end up with a piece of raw hide. So now we have one last step: smoking it.

Smoking
No, I don’t mean roll it up and set it alight. Smoking preserves and locks in the softness, enabling you to wash the hide – even in the machine. Smoking also helps you with thick hides where they come up somewhat stiff. Smoke them lightly to lock in the softness you have already achieved, then redress and soften again. Kudu hides invariably take three to four cycles of dressing, softening, and smoking to get them velvety soft. To smoke, take the skin and make a sack. Glue (with hide glue or contact adhesive) or sew it along the edges to make the sack. Sew/glue on a skirt and hang it over the smoke pit. Dig a hole and make a fire. Let the fire burn down to a good bed of coals and put bits of rotten wood on top. Hang the sack over the hole and allow the smoke to waft through the sack. There should be no folds and the smoke should cause the sack to blow up like a balloon. It’s not a train smash if it doesn’t, it just means smoke is escaping somewhere and your hide will take longer to smoke. Constantly check for hot spots. Too hot a fire will cook the skin. If it’s too hot for your hand it’s too hot for the skin. When it’s the colour you want, turn the skin inside out and do the other side.
Done, finished, beautiful and you did it yourself. And all it cost you was time. Take your hide and either leave it in the sun for a few days to air away most of the smoky smell, or wash it and run it gently over the cable when it’s dry. Or leave the smokey smell as a very effective scent-masking device for hunting. Some native Americans would stand over a smoky fire to mask human scent before hunting. You now have a very durable material that should last a lifetime.

Happy tanning!