"Turning the hide of a deer into tanned buckskin is truly becoming a lost art."

Class Length: 3 days
Class Dates: June 1-3, 2012
Location: Western Reserve Farm Museum (Richfield, Ohio)
Price: $265 (Hides will be provided)
Materials Fee - $30 
Register: Click Here

Wet-Scrape Method
This 3-day workshop is designed to guide the beginner or novice
through the process of wet-scrape brain tanning from start to finish and show you that anyone can do it, anywhere! Participants will gain hands-on experience in the wet scrape method of brain tanning and leave with their very own buckskin.

The workshop will start on Friday at 9:00 am, and go until Sunday at
5:00pm. As far as a daily agenda, here's what's going to happen.

Agenda
Friday - 9:00am start - 6:00pm finish (approx).
We will go over some a lot of theory in the morning including history
of buckskin, how to skin a deer properly, and the basic concepts of the process. Then we'll flesh hides and learn how to properly preserve
them for future use. Next we'll grain hides that have been bucked for
several days. Once that is done, we'll rinse them, which will involve just a little extra care till we go to bed but no real labor.

Saturday - 9:00am start - 7:00pm finish (this HIGHLY depends on hides and weather)
Saturday's work can easily stretch past midnight)  We will begin by discussing the principles involved in dressing the hides, and then remove the hides from the rinse and proceed to dress them with brains multiple times. Once the hides are properly dressed, we'll begin the final softening, which will take us well into the evening usually.
Sunday - 9:00am start - 5:00pm finish (usually we finish a little earlier, but I like to keep it at 5 so we can use the extra time to have
students help with clean up).

Sunday is an easy day, with only the smoking of the hide to be done. We'll discuss multiple smoking methods and its principles, and then create sacks out of the hides, gather punky rotten wood on the landscape, and proceed to smoke the hides. After the hides are finished, we'll go over a "show and tell" of buckskin items and some tips on how to make things out of buckskin.

Register: Click Here