John, it would be interesting to know the tanning process. From skinning, hair removal, etc, the entire process.
I know its easy enuff to Google but some hunters tan their own and use every part of an animal.
I knew a girl years ago that was allergic to the tanning process so she was looking to get a hide from the Natives up north so she could have a jacket made.
There is one way of smoke tanning it and if I remember, actually using urine as an alternative to chemicals which they didn't have years ago.
I grew up a block away from a Tannery. They used to get the hides in, with a lot of rotting fat and gunk on them. Man, that place stunk to high Heaven.
The workers also stunk worse than anything I have ever smelt also.
I'm sure that the process is much cleaner these days.
Usually, I have access to Moose, Elk and Deer in the Fall so it is something that I was considering trying at some point.
I would be happy to describe the tanning process but my description would be based on only a few visits to actual tanneries. There is actually a remarkable amount of information about every way to tan available on the net.
Here is a playlist of videos showing how leather is made:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSKV5CK_fziUVoOPhn6m64-Z8lLeFt7rq
Basically the skin is placed in a vat of liquid that is mixed to make the hair fall off after a few days. Most of the hair will come off and the rest will be removed by hand. Then the skin is washed and it's then conditioned with another liquid mix that is designed to replace the cells with material that biodegrades extremely slowly. When this happens the result is leather, a skin that has been worked into a useful material that is strong and won't rot easily.
There are many ways to tan leather and the link I provided in an earlier post describes methods going back to the Eygptians and the Romans. Hunters sometimes use brain tanning which is using the brains of the animal to remove the hair.
In industrial tanning the skins are worked in huge drums where the mixture inside and the amount of time in the drums determines the type of leather that will be produced. In general using vegetable derived chemicals such as tannin from the bark of oak trees and oils coupled with longer curing times produces the most desirable vegetable tanned leathers that are associated with tooling and carving. Use of chemicals such as chromium speeds up production and produces a different type of leather. This is where the term chrome tanned comes from. Generally the softer leathers such as nappa and prints will be produced through the chrome tanning process.
All in all this is a labor intensive and nasty business. Even the best tanneries are not nice places to work. From an environmental standpoint leather production is still highly polluting in some places while in others major steps were taken to control the waste produced and reduce the pollution to acceptable levels.
I personally have tried to weigh the pros and cons of using leather vs. going to all man-made materials. What I ultimately decided is that all materials impact the environment to varying degrees and ultimately leather is a material which can be made by any human on their own using only what they can find in nature. So although the industrial scale of tanning has a sordid history of being major polluters the product is incredibly beneficial to mankind as a whole. To me leather is a natural example of recycling. Because of the vast consumption of meat there is plenty of cowhide available which would otherwise be left to rot if not made into useful leather.
I have come to appreciate even more deeply the amount of work and thought that goes into producing leather. To appreciate the vast array of textures and uses leather has. Most leather workers today are not close to the tanning process. We buy our leather from wholesalers or in my case from tannery agents in giant markets.
Here is a trip to Tandy Leather in Oklahoma City a few years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR8p6PGBboI
It's all fascinating to me.
