Fur Handling

[studabaka]

A few additional points for consideration/inclusion in the fur handling tips thread......

Prior to skinning is a good time to remove burrs and even wash the fur if it has significant mud or blood matting the hair. Then towel dry/damp.

I have read that using borax or DP during skinning an initial fleshing will absorb a lot of grease, blood, fluids. Making it less slippery as you skin. Giving a better 'bite' when you flesh, and reducing the risk of rot and grease burn if frozen or air dried vs immediately salted. I have not used this technique myself as I skin/flesh/salt as soon after dispatching as possible, but recently I have been taking in frozen hides from others to tan and upon thawing I have found a fair amount of blood and grease and I'm concerned about slippage.

Just a thought...... If you would like, I would be happy to take the great points you have laid out in your tips thread and incorp them into a single word doc that you could review/edit and repost. Something we could maintain, enhance, proactively distribute in the hopes that it will help folks take the right steps upfront to minimize risk to their trophies.... and possibly make our lives easier by reducing the number of customers we have to break the bad news to.... Just a thought, Let me know what you think.

[FinsnFur]

A few additional points for consideration/inclusion in the fur handling tips thread......

Prior to skinning is a good time to remove burrs and even wash the fur if it has significant mud or blood matting the hair. Then towel dry/damp.

Good points Stu.
I only locked that thread to keep the conversation out and make it a reference thread. I'd like to go back and bold out the topic in each post so it was easier to navigate and find what your looking for. I kind of forgot about it.

I'd be happy to unlock it if you wanted to do a little write up on pre inspection/cleaning and add it to it.

By the way, I've never done the borax. My opinion is that it ruins the hide from the git go, because it always seems to play havoc with the pickling acids after that. I have had several come in that were boraxed instead of salted, I send them right back.

That's just my opinion, different acids or different tanners might have different results.

I know that some fly by night taxidermists will flesh a hide and borax it real good and call it complete. 

[studabaka]

OK. Let me take a wack at reorganizing in an offline document and I'll email it to you. We can then discuss how best to post it. I'm thinking it would be nice for folks to be able to print out a complete copy for their reference, but it might also be nice if they could click on and pull up a specific step..... Your the technoweenie, so I'm sure you'll figure it out.

I think I'll add a section on case skinning in there also and maybe some preamble....yada, yada, yada

On the borax. I have never used it either and certainly don't view it as a replacement for any of the traditional steps. My 'new awareness' is probably something you have dealt with more than you wanted. That's guys skinning it out, leaving blood, hunks of meat & fat, etc on it and then rolling it up fur side out, putting it in a plastic bag, putting it in the freezer, and thinking that everything will be hunkie dorie. I have an email into Bruce Riddel around this and will let you know what his thinking is when I hear back. Without promoting one tanning approach over another, given my limited experience is mostly eztan based, I certainly don't want to suggest borax [or something else] to folks if it screws up the subsequent steps. I just want to give the best direction we can to 'non-fleshing freezer users' to maximize their chance of success. Maybe just toweling or maybe a wash/rinse and toweling and freezing fur side in......

Regardless, Let me research it a bit, see what bruce says, maybe poll some of the other folks on taxidermy.net for thoughts, ideas, opinions and I'll put something together for you to look at.

At the end of the day it needs to be something you would want your customers doing.

[studabaka]

Well oh wise one..... Bruce is 100% with you on the borax approach based on some of his old posts. I'll have to see if he has any other tricks to consider...... So nix the borax thought..... I did see where some are using it in leu of tanning......geeez  sure wouldn't want to be their customer.

I'm thinking your desired reciept is to get it salt cured. Do you accept frozen stuff from folks?

[FinsnFur]

I do early in the season, and from locals only.
My reasoning for that is, early in the season, things are slow and I can tend to them better as they are salted and dried, plus I have the room to do it.

As the season progresses, I get 200 hides hanging on the rack and I don't want to be held up by one that shows up froze or in a wet garbage bag of blood.

The other thing is, I normally process skins on a first come first serve basis. So If I'm working on something that's been here for 60 days, and all of a sudden the UPS man shows up with a bag of blood or a block of ice, I have to drop everything, and deal with that or run the risk of losing the skin to slippage. It's not fair to customers that prepped the hides properly and shipped first.

I don't think there are very many places at all that will take a frozen or raw hide. And if you get into this business Stu, you'll find that the only reason people want to send them that way is because they dont want to flesh them.
So the more we can educate them on how to flesh them, the more cofident they'll feellin doing it.