Hide Tanning: The Easy Way to Tan Hides at Home

Tanning your first hide at home is easier that you think. Whether it’s a rabbit hide, deer hide, or a moose hide, you can tan your own animal hides. Let’s get familiar with the tanning process so you can take the next step in hide tanning.

Overview of the Hide Tanning Process

While there are different methods of tanning animal hides, the tanning process remains fairly consistent among each method. There are 8 basic steps in the tanning process and basic materials you’ll need to gather before you get started. Thoroughly working your way through these steps and having the correct supplies, will lead to a beautiful finished product that you can proudly say you tanned yourself.

The 8 Steps in the Home Hide Tanning Process

Skinning
Fleshing & Trimming
Salting
Soaking & Washing
Drip Dry & Wringing
Tanning
Braking & Dry Scraping
Smoking

Materials You’ll Need for the Hide Tanning Process

Hide Tanning Solution of Your Choice
Rubber Gloves
Large Paintbrush
Five-gallon Bucket or Larger for a Big Hide
Multiple Gallons of Water
3 Pounds or More of Non-Iodized Salt
Pressure Washer, Grinding Wheel, or Fleshing Knife
Fleshing Beam
Sandpaper or Dry Scraper
Sharp Knife
Dish Soap
Cordage & Frame
Safety Glasses

Learn to Tan Hides at Home in 8 Steps

Now that we know the basic steps and have a basic list of materials, let’s take an in depth look at each of the 8 steps. We will also cover the different tanning solutions and methods you can use.

Skinning of Animal Skins

The first step in successful hide tanning is skinning the animal. I have found that the more time we take in skinning the animal the easier the hide is to flesh. As you are removing the animal skins, you want as much flesh left on the carcass as possible.

In my opinion, the easiest way is to have the animal hanging with one person holding it steady while another person carefully removes the animal skins by pulling slowly, taking the time to use a skinning or fleshing knife when you see any flesh wanting to be pulled off with the hide. I have found that the flesh on the sides of the animal, around the rib cage area are often the areas where flesh will want to stay attached to the hide as you are pulling it.

Take your time, as it’s easier to flesh while the animal is stationary. Once the hide is completely off, you’ll have to control the hide and keep it from moving around while fleshing it. This can be a challenge depending on what type of hide you are working with and your set up.

Determining your next step will depend on how much time you have available after removing the hide. If you are short on time and can’t commit to immediately fleshing and trimming the hide, you can heavily salt it, and fold flesh side in, and store it in a cool, dark place. You can even freeze it if you need more time.

If you have the time, go ahead and continue fleshing and trimming the hide. Fresh hides are always easier to work with.

Fleshing & Trimming

The next step in the hide tanning process is to continue fleshing and trimming once the hide is completely off. There are a few different ways to flesh a hide. Different methods work better than others with certain hides.

Fleshing With a Fleshing Tool

One of the easier ways to flesh a hide is to prop up a round fleshing beam. I have found that a fleshing beam and small fleshing tool works well for a rabbit hide, deer hide, moose hide or anything in between.

Starting with your hide centered and draped over the fleshing beam use a fleshing tool or hide scraper to remove any remaining flesh from the hide. Standing behind the fleshing beam, leaning up against the hide draped over the end is the easiest way to secure the hide while you flesh it.

It’s a good idea to wear a water proof apron, as this part of the tanning process can be messy. Starting in the center and working your way out to each side is the easiest way to completely flesh the hide. Using a fleshing tool or a hide scraper at an angle to get under any remaining flesh takes time but go slow so you don’t accidently put any small holes in the hide.

Hides that come off of smaller animals like bobcat and even deer hide are easier to put small holes in, which is why I do not recommend the next two methods of fleshing for smaller hides. For thick hides, fleshing with a pressure washer or a grinding disc is best for cow hide, buffalo hide, or moose hide.

Fleshing With Pressure Washer

Fleshing with a pressure washer is one of the faster, easier ways to flesh thick hides. Tacking the hide down to a piece of plywood will help secure the hide in place while you pressure wash it. A good 1800 PSI pressure washer will do a great job and take a lot of the hard work out of fleshing heavy, thick hides.

I’m sure you’re thinking this may be a messy job and you’re right. Be prepared with water resistant clothing, rubber boots, and safety glasses. Just be sure to keep your pressure washer moving across the hide at a nice angle so you don’t accidently put any small holes in the hide while getting under any remaining flesh.

Fleshing With a Grinding Disc

In my opinion, fleshing thick hides, like cow hide or moose hide with a grinding disc is one of the easiest ways to get the job done. It is my go to for getting hides nice and clean.

While it’s not quite as messy as using a pressure washer, the grinding disc will throw bits of flesh in all directions so be sure to wear safety glasses. Cow flesh flung into the eye hurts, trust me on this one.

Also be warned that using a grinding disc is one of the easiest ways to put a hole in your hide, even thick hides. Be sure to only use the grinding disc at an angle and keep it moving, being especially careful around the edges. The grinding wheel can get easily wrapped up in the edges of animal skins, tearing them and potentially hurting you.

When most of the flesh is gone and you only have membrane left, switching to a wire brush attachment works well. Please be careful, take your time, and keep your fingers out of the way.

A Final Word on Fleshing Animal Hides

The better job you do on fleshing your hide the better the final product will be. Furthermore, any flesh left on the hide will rot and leave you with a very smelly hide.

Which leads me to the edges. The edges of hides are really hard to flesh. Once the hide is thoroughly fleshed from the center out the the edges, you can take a really sharp knife and trim off the edges. This will ensure that you have a nice clean, fleshed edge without all the hard work of fleshing the edges.

My Personal Favorite Fleshing Tools

Redneck Convent 12 Inch Fleshing Knife Hide Tanning Fleshing Tool
SZCO Supplies 5.5″ Horn/Bone Handle Crescent Blade Ulu Knife
7.5Amp 4-1/2 Inch 12000 RPM Angle Grinder

Salting With Non-Iodized Salt

After thoroughly fleshing and trimming the edges of your hide it’s time to salt it. A non-iodized salt is the best way to go.

Truth be told though, I’ve used iodized salt on every hide that I have tanned with zero issues. Do your research though and know that it can be a risk using iodized salt, as it can cause a slight discoloration in your hide. It is also recommended to not use rock salt, as it is not broken down enough to do a thorough job. Ultimately, it’s your hide and your choice.

Thoroughly apply a thick layer of salt to your completely fleshed hide, paying close attention to the edges. Once it is covered in salt, you can fold flesh side in or lay it out flat in a cool, dark place.

After it has sat for 24 hours, check n your hide to see what’s happening. Sometimes the salt will pull enough moisture out to where there’s a pool of liquid sitting on the hide. If that’s the case, dump the liquid off.

If you need more time to finish the tanning process, you can add more salt and let it sit for another 24 hours. However, it is really important that during the process you don’t let your hide dry out. The fibers will lock up and turn to raw hide.

The hide needs to stay moist until you are are at the breaking stage. Keeping it in a cool, dark place will help it stay moist.

Hide Soaks & Washing

There are different ways to soaking and washing a hide after fleshing and salting. The number one rule is to never soak your hide in hot water. It must be cooled to room temperature if using hot water and dissolving something like salt in it.

Soaking for Hair On Hide

How you end up soaking and washing your hide will depend on if you want the hair on or hair off. Me personally, I always want to leave the hair on because I use my hides as rugs and ottoman covers throughout my home.

When leaving the hair on, I like to soak my hides in Dawn dish soap for about an hour. Some people recommend soaking a hide for up to eight hours. Please understand though, the longer you soak the hide the greater chance you have for the hair to slip out, as the water makes the skin and hair follicles swell.

I soak my hides just long enough to get them clean, changing the water out if necessary. Now I know, professional hide tanners cringe at the thought of using Dawn dish soap to wash a hide, as it can alter the pH in a negative way.

I, on the other hand, have never had a problem washing hides in Dawn dish soap and have successfully tanned several hides. I am however, just washing the hide and not letting it soak for hours on end, as I like to keep the hair on my hides.

Soaking for Hair Off Hide

If your goal is to make buck skin out of a deer hide or you just want a hair off hide to have a nice piece of leather, soaking and washing will be different. According to the taxidermy.net forum, use 12 quarts of room temperature water, add 1 quart of lime, soak the hide for 3 or 4 days.

Some home tanners use a pickle bath. In this case the hide is soaked in a pickling solution. After soaking, rinse in cool, clean water, drape over a fleshing beam and scrape off the hair. Once all the hair is scraped off, give it a good soak in cool water.

Drip Dry & Wringing

Once you have your hide soaked and/or washed, find a nice place out of direct sunlight to let it drip dry, draped over a 2×4 or pole for a bit. While it’s drip drying, find two metal poles or strong wooden poles.

Ideally, with two people, each wrap the bottom of the hide around a metal or wooden pole and twist each side of the hide while its draped over the pole. This step can be done with one person, just combine both ends of the hide, wrap and wring out. You may find you have to wring it out more times with just one person though. Wringing out thicker hides with one person is difficult.

Pull downward to start stretching the hide as it’s being wrung out. Continue to wringing out the hide, while pulling down on it several times.

Tanning Animal Skins

After your hide has been thoroughly wrung out, it’s time to put the tanning solution on it. I personally use a tanning solution called Tru Bond.

I like to ease and convenience of a blended, paint on tanning solution. Simply lay your hide out on a flat surface and paint on Tru Bond. Let it soak in for two hours. If you want, do a second coat for thick hides. You are now ready to start the process of letting your hide dry while you scrape it dry.

Breaking, Dry Scraping & Softening Animal Skins

Breaking, dry scraping, & softening is a very important step in hide tanning. May people opt to build a frame to lace and stretch their hide onto for the scraping and drying process. Instead of lacing my hides, I like to use these hide tanning clips.

There’s an old saying that says to scrape it dry. In other words, continue scraping, which breaks and softens a hide throughout the drying process. You want to loosen those fibers as it dries. If you don’t, you’ll have a stiff hide once it’s dried.

This part of the tanning process takes a lot of time and muscle. Thick hides can take up to two to three days to dry. Be sure to check it often, as well as the next day. Hides need to be worked throughout the drying process.

My Favorite Dry Scrapers

Redneck Convent Hog Scraper Pelt Fleshing Tool – Dual Plate Hide Scraper
Redneck Convent Single Handle Fleshing Tool, Hide Scraper Flesher

Ways to Break or Soften a Hide as it Dries

Keep it stretched and dry scrape it.
Work the hide back and forth over a 4×4 post while it’s drying.
Use a ball hitch on a truck to work the hide back and forth over.
Have several people hold the hide to stretch and pull in all directions as the hide dries.
Use all of the above and any other creative way you can think of.

Smoking Animal Skins

The final step to preserving your hide and softening it even further is to smoke it, which also gives it a nice color. Feed a small fire for several hours, letting the smoke hit your hide.

A Note on How Much Time You Have to Tan a Hide

Fist off, fresh hides are always easier to work with. However, you can buy some time after thoroughly skinning a hide by salting it heavily and storing it in a cold place or freezing it.

Doing a thorough job during the skinning and fleshing process can buy you some time if you can keep the hide cold. We happen to live in a hot, humid climate and do a lot of our own butchering and also love to tan hides. So for us it was worth it to build a small walk-in cooler using a cool bot. It allows us a space to dry age meat and also a place to store hides at 34 degrees while I’m working on them.

If a walk-in cooler is not an option for you, hides can also be stored in a plastic bin, folded flesh side in, and stored in a refrigerator. Fleshing out hides completely and being able to store them with refrigeration can buy you a lot of time in between the necessary steps of the tanning process.

If this is the route you want to take it is a great idea to coat the flesh side of the hide with neatsfoot oil or natural oils, like beef tallow, to ensure that it stays moist after fleshing and in between the remaining steps of the tanning process.

Hide Tanning Methods You Can Do At Home

What I have found over the years of researching and tanning hides is that everybody has a slightly different way in their tanning process. There are many different ways that you can accomplish tanning hides at home.

Outside of the basic steps and a few rules that must be followed, the rest is a little flexible depending on your set up. My advice to you is to not get analysis paralysis and get overwhelmed with the different methods. Just choose one and get busy tanning your first hide.

You will learn along the way and every hide you do will come out better than the last. Just be sure to wear gloves, protective clothing and safety glasses as some of the solutions can be rough on your hands and eyes.

The Most Important Thing to Remember in Hide Tanning

Thoroughly flesh your hide or it will rot.
Keep your hide moist while you are working on it.
Only use cool water to soak your hide. Hot or warm water will ruin your hide.
Dry scraping and breaking is a must for a soft hide.

Hide Tanning with a Pre-Made Solution

This is the method that I most often use. Getting into hide tanning can be a little intimidating and is a lot of work. To simplify the process, I went with Tru Bond, a pre-made tanning solution. I have used a couple on the market. One gave excellent results and the other, in the orange bottle, I was not so impressed with.

I prefer to use Tru Bond for my tanning product. It’s easy to use and gives a nice soft tan. It is painted onto the clean, fleshed hide and left to sit for two hours. For best results, start scraping it dry, breaking and softening the fibers through the drying process.

Hide Tanning Process with Tree Barks

Almost any tree bark can be boiled down and cooled to make a tea to tan your deer skins or any animal hides in. This is also called a vegetable tan. Tanning with tree barks will give your hide a darker color so if you are looking to preserve a nice, light colored hide tree bark tanning is not the way to go.

This is a traditional method used by the Native Americans. It works best with thin hides, as they are penetrated by the tannic acid more easily. Thicker skins may not absorb the tanning solution all the way through and rot in the middle overtime.

How to Make Tree Bark Tanning Solution

To tan with tree bark, fill a large stock pot half full of bark and top it with water. Boil the mixture for at least an hour, until the liquid is a dark brown color. This mixture will be your concentrated tanning solution.

Once it is cooled, strain the bark out and pour half of it into a plastic bin or tub and top it off with equal amounts of water. Go ahead and submerge your hide into the cooled tanning solution, making sure its completely covered.

Everyday, with a stirring stick, agitate the hide. You should start to notice that the color of the tanning solution gets lighter everyday and the hide gets a little darker from absorbing the tannins. Once you start to notice this, add a cup of the concentrated tanning solution to the hide soak everyday so the hide can soak up more tannic acid.

This process may take 2-3 weeks to complete. To ensure the hide is soaking up enough tannic acid, you may consider taking the hide out every few days and wringing it out so it can soak up fresh tannins after you’ve added more concentrate.

Hide Tanning with Animal’s Brains

That’s right, with the brains of the animal. This is also another traditional method of hide tanning. As a rule of thumb, the brain of said animal will make enough tanning solution for that particular animal.

Take the brain and mash it up as thoroughly as possible in 1 1/2 gallons of hot water and 1/4 cup of olive oil. Some people even go so far as to blend it up. Once your animal’s brain solution is cooled completely and ready, submerge the hide into the mixture, being sure that the whole hide is saturated. Let is soak for about 15 minuets.

You can then take it out and once again, wring it out thoroughly. Repeat this process at least a couple times or more for thick hides. You want to be sure that the brain tanning solution has completely penetrated the hide. Once that is done you can move on to the dry scraping and breaking process we already talked about.

Hide Tanning Process with Egg Yolks

The hide tanning process with egg yolks might be the way you want to go if you don’t have access to the animal’s brains. The egg yolks have similar qualities of brains but are much more accessible. Not to mention, you won’t have to smash or blend up brains to get the job done.

The hide tanning process using egg yolks is the same process of using the animal’s brains. Simply substitute 12 egg yolks for the brains, following the same steps.

Hide Tanning with Salt & Alum

This is a method I haven’t personally tried but according to taxidermy.net mix 10lbs of salt and 1lb of oxalic acid to 20 gallons of water and 2 pounds of aluminum sulphate. Soak for 24 hours stirring a couple times, check the skin for turning white, if its still pink add more acid and aluminum sulfate. After the soak is complete, you’ll want to finish by scraping your hide dry, breaking the fibers and softening as you go.

Hide Tanning at Home

Now that you’ve been given a thorough overview of hide tanning, choose which method interest you the most and contact your local butcher or even a friend that hunts and see what kinds of hides you can find to start tanning. One last word of advice, don’t be scared of the bigger, thicker hides. Yes, they take more time but I have found that they are actually easier to work with.

For a complete home tanning kit, take a look at Advanced Tanning Solutions, Tan-a-Hide, Dale Knobloch’s Large Mammal Tanning Kit they also have a small animal kit.

Happy Homesteading & Hide Tanning,

Jenny @ The GrahamStead Family Farm

a woman holding up a cow hide that she tanned

Jenny and her family have been homesteading for over 20 years. They are currently farming on their 10 acre Florida farm, that they built from the ground up, 8 years ago, growing 100% of their meat and a lot of their vegetables. From their small herd of Aberdeen Angus Cattle, Pastured Poultry, Sheep, and seasonal pigs, they are able to raise enough meat for the family while selling extra to the community. All the while, striving to butcher at home, as much as possible, and use the bits and pieces of their harvest by preserving food, making bone broth, and (Jenny’s favorite) tanning all kinds of hides!

Sources: Taxidermy.net Forum

Good ol’ fashioned getting your hands dirty and trying things for yourself.

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